An injury scare was all that prevented the New York Knicks from making a trade with the Toronto Raptors to acquire Vince Carter.
Carter, who spent the first seven seasons of his career with the Raptors, was eventually traded to the Brooklyn (formerly New Jersey) Nets during the 2004-05 season. Recently, however, Knicks owner James Dolan joined the Roommates Show podcast to explain how the now 48-year-old was very close to becoming a member of the Knicks instead.
“We were going to do the trade, and the medical team came back and told us that he had a 90 per cent severed Achilles tendon,” Dolan said. “[They said] it would never hold up and that when it ruptured, he would never be the same player. For that reason, we didn’t do the trade.
“Vince Carter went on to have five, six, seven [great] years. I kept waiting for his Achilles tendon to [tear]. It never [did]. He’s putting in 30, 40 a night. I’m like, ‘Ya, we certainly dodged a bullet there, didn’t we.'”
James Dolan says that the Knicks were on the verge of trading for prime Vince Carter, but his medical team said that Carter’s achilles was “90% severed.”
“Vince Carter went on to have five, six, seven [great] years… [jokingly] I kept waiting for his achilles tendon to break, it… pic.twitter.com/zq9tnXRwbL
— KnicksMuse (@KnicksMuse) March 13, 2025
As Dolan mentioned, Carter went on to have several great seasons and didn’t retire until the conclusion of the 2019-20 campaign. While he did miss a brief period during the 2004-05 season with an Achilles strain, it didn’t cause him any other serious issues that kept him out of game action.
What’s interesting about all of this is that the relationship between the Raptors and Dolan is very poor all these years later.
Not only has Dolan attempted, unsuccessfully, to hire Raptors president Masai Ujiri, but he’s also currently suing the Raptors after claiming that a former Knicks employee gave the organization more than 3,000 files, including video scouting reports and play frequency files.
As for Carter, his relationship with Raptors fans had soured for a long time following his departure. It has recovered in recent years, however, and improved even further when the organization retired his jersey this past September.
John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images
