After 22 seasons, Vince Carter has called it a career.
Carter's retirement announcement on Thursday brings closure to a playing career that spanned four decades and featured stints with eight different teams for whom he played alongside 261 different teammates.
Want to truly get a feel for how much of NBA history Carter's career touches? He played against 1,668 different players, which makes up 37% of everyone who has ever appeared in an NBA game. When people say you can't tell the story of the NBA without Carter, they quite literally mean it.
THE ULTIMATE VINCE CARTER TRIBUTE
There will be plenty more to come in the weeks ahead on NBA.com as we look to celebrate the career of a Canadian basketball icon. But for now, here's a look into several different perspectives which should offer plenty of insight into Carter's illustrious career.
What Carter means to Canada
The first star in franchise history, Carter put Toronto Raptors basketball on the map, brought the franchise into the limelight and inspired millions of kids across every corner of the country. We asked five different Canadian journalists to give us their perspective on what Carter means to basketball in Canada.
MORE: Canadian roundtable on Vince Carter's importance
The five chapters of Carter's legendary career
NBA.com's Scott Rafferty travels through time to analyze the different chapters of an ever-evolving career which saw Carter change course from high-flying superstar to sharp-shooting role player.
MORE: The five chapters of VC
By The Numbers: Vinsanity in Toronto
NBA.com's Micah Adams busts out the calculator to crunch some numbers on Vinsanity. What All-Star voting says about Carter's popularity in the early 2000s and why one moment overshadows an overlooked clutch component of Carter's Raptors resume.
MORE: Explaining Vinsanity through numbers
Carter's greatest moments with the Raptors
The draft. The 2000 Slam Dunk contest. The 51-point game. The postseason breakthrough. The duel with Allen Iverson. NBA.com's Kyle Irving revisits the greatest moments from Carter's spellbinding stint with the Raptors.
MORE: Vince Carter's greatest moments with the Raptors
What if Vince and T-Mac stayed together in Toronto?
There's an alternate reality in which Tracy McGrady never leaves Toronto in the summer of 2000 and stays with Carter to form an Eastern Conference powerhouse. NBA.com's Gilbert McGregor daydreamed of what could have happened had VC and T-Mac stayed attached at the hip in Toronto.
MORE: What if Vince and T-Mac stayed together?
Ranking the greatest dunks of Carter's career
Vinsanity brought rise to in-game dunking the likes of which nobody had seen since early in Michael Jordan's prime. NBA.com's Kyle Irving took all of Carter and Jordan's best dunks and ranked the top 10. How does Carter's 360-degree windmill compare to MJ's launch from the foul line? How does MJ's dunk on Ewing compare to VC's dunk on (and over!) Frederic Weis?
MORE: The top 10 dunks from Vince Carter and Michael Jordan
Where does Vince rank among all-time Raptors?
Vince Carter or Kawhi Leonard? Kyle Lowry or DeMar DeRozan? NBA.com's Carlan Gay ranked his top 10 Raptors of all-time.
MORE: The top 10 greatest Raptors
The views expressed here do not represent those of the NBA or its clubs.