Vince Carter spent the first six years of his NBA career in Toronto, which was an eventful and controversial stint for a multitude of reasons. Toward the end of his time with the Raptors, he had an infamous incident with then-head coach Sam Mitchell, which apparently involved him body-slamming the latter.
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During his appearance on the Run It Back show, Carter had to address the rumors of the incident after Mitchell recently went viral for a talk show incident. After initially playfully denying the incident, the former Raptor conveyed the crux of the story from an onlooker’s perspective.
Carter painted a picture of the events that transpired and claimed that the slam was more a result of a friendly wrestling match than an actual fight.
He said, “Sam was in the training room and they said that he walked up to me…and they said that he grabbed the player [who was Carter himself], whoever the player was and the player grabbed him back and they got to tussling.”
However, co-host Lou Williams wasn’t pleased with Carter’s attempt to make it seem like it wasn’t him with Mitchell in that training room. He asked the NBA legend to tell the story from a first-person perspective.
Carter then switched up the storyline. He said that the biggest thing in a ‘fight’ is that no one wants to be the one to get slammed. So, keeping the basics in mind, he decided to be the one to take advantage and deliver the body slam on his coach. He said, “It wasn’t really a fight more so…we were having a good time. Like, get off me, man, get off me.”
The 47-year-old broke down the ‘fight’ from a technical point of view as well. Like a trained martial artist, he said that once he was scooped, he planned on getting inside to gain enough momentum to lift the coach up and then slam him to the ground. Despite checking all the boxes of being a fight, Carter claimed that it was just banter amongst men.
Regardless of what actually happened inside, there seems to be no bad blood between the two. The only way to get this story straightened out would be to get Carter and Mitchell in a room and ask them to talk about it.
