MIAMI — These days, Anthony Carter is a Miami Heat player development coach. But 17 years ago, Carter was at the center of a clerical error that eventually led to the Heat’s first NBA championship.
After spending the first four seasons of his 13-year NBA career with the Heat, Carter was planning to exercise a $4.1 million player option in the 2003 offseason to remain in Miami. Except Carter’s agent, Bill Duffy, did not notify the Heat by the June 30 deadline that Carter had decided to return.
“I really wasn’t even aware of it,” Carter said Tuesday to the Miami Herald when asked to look back at that blunder. “I didn’t get upset or nothing like that because I knew what kind of person Bill was. Mistakes happen, and the first thing he did was call me and explain it to me.”
But the mistake was costly. Carter became a free agent and settled for a minimum contract with the San Antonio Spurs, which was about $750,000.
The mistake cost Carter more than $3 million and created unexpected cap space for the Heat, opening the door for Pat Riley to sign Lamar Odom that offseason and then trade him and a package of players to the Los Angeles Lakers for Shaquille O’Neal one year later in 2004.
As it turns out, Duffy’s error helped the Heat and didn’t hurt Carter as much as once expected.
Led by a duo of O’Neal and Dwyane Wade, the Heat won their first NBA championship in 2006. And Duffy agreed to pay Carter back for the $3 million accident out of his own pocket, paying him in installments over the years.
Duffy made the last of those payments just a few months ago, with Carter now paid back in full for the money he lost in 2003.
“He said that he was going to do whatever he had to do to make it whole and we came up with a payment installment and he kept his word until 2020,” Carter said. “It meant a lot. Because so many lawyers were calling me trying to ask me if I wanted to sue him and stuff like that. But I knew that he had my back from the beginning from Day 1 when I first met him and his family. He had flown me out to California and I met his family and I knew what type of guy he was. So suing him didn’t even cross my mind. Like I said, mistakes happen and he has made it whole.”
Carter said he never even considered switching agents because Duffy is “a stand-up guy and I wasn’t going to change agents because it was a mistake.” Carter and Duffy are still friends, and Carter still turns to him for advice on his career.
“We never even had a conversation about the money,” Carter said. “It was just like whenever we saw each other, it was a mutual thing. We would come up and talk to each other like nothing happened. When I needed advice for my son when my son was signing to go to college, I could call Bill. Even if he was busy, he would send me a text saying, ‘I’ll call you back in five minutes.’ He’ll call me back or he would pick up, and I would say, ‘I got a question about this’ or ‘I got a question about this contract.’ ... We’ve always had a great relationship and still have it. Nothing ever bad happened between us.”
Duffy recently said to The New York Times, which first reported the story: “When this happened, I was hearing from a lot of people because I took responsibility. I took ownership of it and took care of it and he was taken care of. I’ve had Wall Street people call me and say: ‘Man, that happens all the time. Everybody tries to hide from it. They try to pass the buck. You stood up for it. You took care of it.’ I actually gained a lot of respect from people.”
Carter believes the Heat probably wouldn’t have won a championship in 2006 if it wasn’t for the cap space he mistakenly helped create in 2003 that eventually turned into O’Neal.
“I think they should have gave me a ring for being able to get Shaq,” Carter said. “Then on the other hand, I think the mistake kind of helped me through financial stuff. Because I had extra money coming in every year. ... That was kind of a blessing in disguise right there.”
In Carter’s four seasons with the Heat before he accidentally became a free agent, he averaged 5.5 points, 2.4 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 1.1 steals. He went on to play nine more seasons in the NBA before his career came to an end in 2012.
Carter, 45, has since entered coaching, making his return to the Heat as an assistant coach with the G League’s Sioux Falls Skyforce in 2016. He’s entering his third season as a member of Erik Spoelstra’s staff as a player development coach.
“AC, we call his player development program AC Academy,” Spoelstra said recently of Carter. “I think he’s one of the very best in the entire league at player development, just the level of energy and thought that goes into his workouts. He’ll meet you at any time, any where, any place, to help our guys get better. He’s great with our player development.”
Why did Carter decide to return to the Heat as a coach years after unintentionally parting ways with the organization as a player?
“Because of the culture and it’s family first. It’s family before the players,” Carter said. “When I was here, I’ve never been part of another organization like the Heat that cares about their family and the players and all the people that work here from the janitors to the people behind the scenes to the security. They just take care of everybody like one big family. When I left here, I never burnt bridges wherever I played at. By me being with the Heat for the first four years, they taught me how to work hard and never burn bridges and treat everybody with respect. ... When I reached out to them, they brought me back right away.”
But Carter said he’s still working on getting a 2006 Heat championship ring that he feels indirectly partly responsible for.
“I was going to mess with Pat probably coming up soon,” Carter said with a laugh. “Just to see what they say. I’m going to mess with Andy [Elisburg] and Pat.”
