Vince Carter has been honing his craft as a broadcaster since well before his playing days ended. Recently, he spoke with The Big Lead about his goals in calling NBA games. He said that he wants to be seen as an analyst that makes viewers smarter.
“I want to be your coach on TV,” Carter said. “That’s who I am. I enjoy explaining. I enjoyed teaching, I enjoyed helping players as a player when I was around my last years in my career. I enjoyed being a mentor.”
During the last decade of his NBA career, Vince Carter would join Turner or ESPN as soon as his season ended in order to hone his skills. He says he realized very quickly that he wanted a career in the media. When the media became his full-time job, Carter said he had a model in mind of who he wanted to be on-air.
“Tony Romo, he’s a guy who explains the game, and seeing his approach, that’s what I wanted to be.”
Carter never questioned whether he would be successful in the media. He said that he learned a lot from being on the other side. He focused on what he did and didn’t like in interviews, but wasn’t just going to rely on relationships in order to get information to give to the audience. That is why he went out of his way to pay attention to what worked when reporters tried to get players to open up.
“I wanted to make sure that I still knew how to ask questions and make you guys feel comfortable and still understand how to ask the right questions, the good questions where you can get more out of guys. I really went deep into that into understanding and what it took. That was kind of eye-opening for me.”
Vince Carter has been valuable to ESPN. The network has used him on its NBA coverage. It has also used him on the ACC Network to talk about college basketball. That was certainly a valuable perspective this year as he was able to talk about what it means to play against and beat Duke. That was something unique the former Tar Heel could bring to coverage of Mike Krzyzewski’s final season coaching the Blue Devils.
