Anthony Carter never dared to dream of the life he is now living.
Twelve NBA seasons as a player and another eight on coaching staffs?
Rearing a son who was a first-round selection and set the NBA Combine record with a three-quarter-court sprint of 2.87 seconds?
And having his University of Hawaii jersey No. 23 being retired in a special ceremony this Saturday in Bankoh Arena at Stan Sheriff Center?
“This is the best accomplishment of my whole basketball career besides making it to the NBA,” Carter said. “Being able to say your jersey is being retired at whatever level — high school, college — this is a big deal to me.”
After all, Carter never imagined even attending college. He recalled growing up in the hardscrabble parts of Atlanta, “a little hard-headed kid from the ’hood, trying to be bad. But anything’s possible as long as you work at it. I wasn’t expecting anything. I just wanted to play basketball.”
It was basketball that motivated Carter to attend high school, and when his freshman season ended, the classroom lost its only appeal. Every morning, a counselor called his grandmother’s house to remind him to show up for classes or risk repeating the ninth grade.
“I told my grandmother she doesn’t have to wake me up anymore, I’m not going to school anymore,” Carter recalled.
His parents were no longer part of his upbringing. Of his 14 aunts and uncles, only Deborah Carter received a high school diploma. (She went to the University of Georgia, and played two seasons in the WNBA.) But all seven uncles spent time in prison.
“Everyone in my family was known to drop out,” Carter said.
Carter hung out with older guys at outdoor basketball courts.
“I wanted to be like them,” Carter said. “I just wanted to play (basketball) on the streets for more money.”
Carter and his friends would gather outside nightclubs, waiting for drug dealers full of alcohol and bravado to exit.
“They think they can play,” Carter said. “They were drinking and they had all the money. Me and my boys, waiting outside the club, trying to get people to play us. We would always beat them.”
Soon after, Carter said, “the drug dealers from my neighborhood would put up money against the drug dealers from different neighborhoods. We had five guys from my neighborhood. We were always on the same team. We had the chemistry. Once we won, we knew it was two, three thousand a game. We’d split the money. The drug dealers who put money on us knew they were going to get the money from the other drug dealers.”
Carter said he and his basketball friends never used or sold drugs. Instead, they would use their share of the winnings to buy shoes or pay bills.
“That’s how we were eating for three years,” Carter said.
One night, Carter scored 40 points. An opposing player, Andre Craig, told Carter he was good enough to play college basketball. Craig said he knew a coach in California, Bill Brummel of Saddleback College, who could use a player with Carter’s skills.
Carter called Llew Haden, a leader of the Atlanta-based “I Have a Dream” foundation. Haden had visited Carter’s fifth-grade class, offering to help guide students to one day attend college.
“They say, once a ‘Dreamer,’ always a ‘Dreamer,’” Carter said of Haden’s promise. With Haden’s assistance, Carter enrolled at an adult education center to take classes toward earning a GED. Haden made the deal he offered to that fifth-grade class: Make sure you earn at least a C average. Twenty of those students eventually attended college.
After acing the night-school classes and earning a GED, Carter received an opportunity to try out at Saddleback. Haden paid for Carter’s airplane ticket.
“I knew I was going to stick,” Carter said. “I packed everything.”
During his second season at Saddleback, Brummel recommended Carter to Jackson Wheeler, a UH assistant coach in charge of recruiting. As part of the UH-sponsored recruiting visit, Carter attended a Rainbow Wahine volleyball match.
“I saw how crazy the fans were,” Carter said. “I was like, ‘This could be something special (in basketball) if they’re doing this for volleyball.’”
Carter also felt comfortable reuniting with former Saddleback forwards Eric Ambrozich and Micah Kroeger.
“Alika (Smith) sold me on Hawaii, too,” Carter said. “He was a local boy, and he was good. I thought me and him might be something.”
Carter and Smith formed a starting backcourt that spawned “dynamic duo” accolades. At 6 feet 1 — “maybe I’m 6 feet” — Carter excelled on drives and gravity-defying dunks. As part of UH’s high-low “G Game” offense, Smith would curl behind screens and swish 3s or feed Carter inside.
“He had the confidence, but it took me to bring it out of him,” Carter said of Smith. “He knew I had his back. And I knew I needed him to open up everything. When he was shooting those 3s, I didn’t think he was going to miss.… He knew what I was going to do just from eye contact. You don’t find a lot of teammates like that back in the day. We hit it off the first practice.”
The ’Bows went 21-8 in 1996-97, a run that was hampered by center Seth Sundberg’s season-ending spleen injury. Carter was named the Western Athletic Conference’s Player of the Year.
The next season, the ’Bows defeated Indiana in the opener. During the Rainbow Classic, the ’Bows upset Tyronn Lue-led Nebraska in the semifinals.
“Every time I see him, I never bring that up,” Carter said of the now head coach of the Los Angeles Clippers.
Then in the Rainbow Classic title game, the ’Bows beat then-No. 2 Kansas.
“When we beat Kansas and Coach (Riley) Wallace took off his shirt on the court, I remember that all day, every day,” Carter said, chuckling.
Carter also remembers the showdowns against UNLV’s Keon Clark and Fresno State’s Chris Herren and Rafer Alston (known as streetball legend “Skip 2 My Lou”).
“They thought I was going to be a little guy they could run over,” Carter said. “They didn’t know we were from the ’hood, too.”
What also was little known was that Carter played most of his senior season with a subluxed left shoulder suffered during a practice.
“It popped out twice in the season, and I didn’t miss a game,” said Carter, who essentially was a one-armed player in 1997-98. But Carter never complained. He still averaged 18.2 points and 7.3 assists.
“I was happy to play there,” Carter said. “I wasn’t expecting to make it to the NBA. I just wanted to play hard and give the people what they paid their hard-earned money for.”
The shoulder injury likely kept Carter from being drafted. But he eventually found his way to the NBA, signing with the Miami Heat in 1999. He wore No. 25. “I was 25 when I joined the NBA,” he said.
In 2003, agent Bill Duffy failed to notify the Heat by the deadline that Carter wanted to renew his player option. The Heat renounced their rights to Carter. Out of his own wallet, Duffy paid Carter $3 million as reimbursement for the lost wages. Duffy still serves as Carter’s agent.
“We’re friends,” Carter said. “As long as people are loyal to me, I’m all in with them. Being just up front is what I’m all about.”
Carter also remains close to Wheeler and to Haden.
“I’ve known Llew since I was 11 years old, when he talked to my fifth-grade class about the ‘I Have A Dream’ program,” Carter said. “He saw something in me I didn’t see. He was a genuine person. He wasn’t expecting anything. He had my back because my parents weren’t in my life. … When I wanted to go to JUCO after dropping out, he was the one who helped me. He got me a flight to junior college. When I made it to the NBA, I made him my financial adviser. He’s my best friend. Now we’re business partners. He was in my corner and helps me still to this day. If I called him right now, he’d get on a plane and be here.”
It was Haden who encouraged Carter to give back to UH. In 2008, Carter donated $100,000 to UH to set up an endowment fund.
“Because of all the local fans,” Carter said of his gift. “I wasn’t a local guy, but they always showed me love. I had Hawaiian friends and Samoan friends and this and that, and they always took care of me. I thought it was my duty to help a kid over there from Hawaii or the mainland or wherever to be able to go to school. Because I was one of the ones who was blessed to be able to go to college and make some money and not be on the streets selling drugs. I wanted to give back to all the people in Hawaii who showed me so much love. Without them, I wouldn’t have made it to the NBA.”
Memphis’ staff was released following the 2024-25 NBA season. Carter remains on the payroll through this season, and is hopeful of rejoining the Miami Heat next season. He is helping to train his son, Devin, who plays for the Sacramento Kings, and is looking forward to Saturday’s ceremony during the the ’Bows’ nationally televised game against UC Santa Barbara.
“This is special to me,” Carter, now 50, said. “To see the people and smiles I put on their faces and the joy they brought me, it’s big time.”
