Alonzo Mourning Refused To Talk To Vince Carter For ‘6 Or 7 Years’ After Getting Dunked On

Vince Carter just finished his 20th season in the NBA, appearing in 58 games as a member of the Sacramento Kings. At 41, Carter is twice as old as some of the players entering the league in this year’s NBA Draft, but he is still planning on playing again next season, given that he’s still managing to play at a productive level.

Few NBA superstars have been able to go through the career transformation from star player to role player to veteran presence off the bench as smoothly and willingly as Carter has. Given that he was at one time arguably the league’s most athletic player and, without a doubt, the NBA’s premier dunker, seeing him gracefully transition into becoming a quality veteran role player has been impressive.

While he doesn’t have the same spring as he used to, it’s important to remember who Carter was as a player and how scintillating he was to watch in his prime. The dunk contest performance in 2000 will live forever as the pinnacle of the competition, but Carter has dozens if not hundreds of in-game dunks that are almost unfathomable. In Olympic competition, it’s him jumping over 7-footer Frederic Weis. In the NBA, his iconic in-game dunk came against Alonzo Mourning when he met ‘Zo at the rim and cocked it back before throwing down a vicious dunk on the legend.

On Wednesday, Carter joined Rachel Nichols and his cousin and former teammate Tracy McGrady on The Jump and was asked about that dunk. Carter explained what was going through his mind as he approached the rim and then said Mourning refused to speak to him for six or seven years because of that dunk.

McGrady joked Mourning was correct in his refusal to talk to Carter because of the disrespect. While that seems a bit extreme, it probably wasn’t fun for Mourning to have lived on highlight reels forever because of that moment, so its understandable why he’d be mad at Carter.