Devin Carter is a second-generation NBA player. His father, Anthony Carter, was a basketball journeyman who put together a thirteen-year career in the NBA playing for six different teams. Anthony got into coaching right after retirement, moving through the G-League, with stops in Austin, Sacramento and finally Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where his work as an assistant coach for the Miami Heat-affiliated Skyforce got him a promotion to the parent organization as a player development coach. He’s now with the Memphis Grizzlies.
Devin grew up on the move along with his family, starting his high school career in Greenwood Village, Colorado on the outskirts of Denver, before transferring to Doral Academy Prep in Doral Florida, when his family relocated to Florida following his father’s hiring as a player development coach with the Heat.
Doral Prep is located in the Miami-Dade metro, and is publicly funded. It is not, contrary to what its name may suggest, a private basketball factory. In fact, Devin Carter is the school’s only notable basketball alum. Carter joined the team the year after they won a state basketball championship, and was an early contributor.
As a 16-year-old junior, he made a mark at the A-Rod Classic in December 2018, when Doral Academy won the tournament by beating The Rock 46-45, with Carter scoring a whopping 32 of the team’s 46 points. He was also named the tournament MVP. A week later, he led Doral with 37 of the team’s 60 points in a 60-48 win over Miami Springs. In February he scored 30 of 49 for Doral as they beat Belen in the state tournament for their 52nd consecutive win. His stats that year, 25.7 points per game and 5.8 rebounds per game, led to him receiving honors as Florida’s Player of the Year for his school’s classification.
Carter had been recruited by the University of South Carolina, whose coach was good friends with Jorge Fernandez, the boys’ basketball coach at Doral Prep, but he had drawn little interest from other major programs, and had not signed a letter of intent during the early signing period of his senior year. Devin was, nonetheless, enjoying a stellar season when he suffered a shoulder injury in February of 2020. Carter’s scoring average had jumped from 25.7 points per game to 28.8 in his senior campaign to go along with 8.7 rebounds per game.
In an effort to build his skills and draw interest on the college front, Carter opted to take a post-graduate year at the Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. The Brewster Academy is a small school located in rural New Hampshire near Lake Winnipesaukee and the Maine border, about a hundred miles north of Boston. The academy dates back to 1820 and offers instruction to students from grades nine through 12, as well as offering post-graduate instruction, typically for individuals looking to raise their athletic profile.
Tuition along with room and board for a year of post-graduate instruction at Brewster is an eye-watering $80,800. In exchange for that, students get access to a 50,000 square foot athletic facility with a 200-meter indoor track. Its most notable basketball alum is Donovan Mitchell.
Coming out of Brewster, Carter had jumped into the top-100 recruit lists at ESPN, Rivals.com, and 247Sports.com.
Ultimately, Carter enrolled at South Carolina, the school that had shown the earliest interest in his game. He was named to the SEC’s All-Freshman team in 2021-22. He played in 30 of the team’s 32 games, drawing seven starts and averaging 9 points and 3.8 rebounds. When Frank Martin, who had recruited Carter, was fired after his freshman season, Devin entered the transfer portal and landed at Providence.
With the Friars, Carter leaped into a starting role. Over the next two seasons he started all 66 of the Friars’ games. As a sophomore, he was an All-Big East honorable mention, and was named All-District 1 by the USBWA. He averaged 13 points per game and 4.9 rebounds. He also averaged 1.8 steals per game, and 1.1 blocks per game as the Friars drew an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, losing to Kentucky in the first round.
At the end of his sophomore season, Carter’s coach at Providence, Ed Cooley, jumped ship for a job at Georgetown, meaning that Carter would enter his junior year playing for his third coach in as many years.
As a junior, his scoring average jumped to 19.7 points per game, and rebounds jumped to 8.7 per game. His defensive game blossomed, as he was named a Naismith Defensive Player of the Year semifinalist, as well as being named the Big East’s Player of the Year, and making the AP’s All-Big East First Team, the Big East’s All-Tournament Team, and the NABC All-District 5 First Team.
After collecting these awards, Carter declared for the draft, where he projected to be a low-mid lottery pick.
Despite being relatively old at age 22, Carter’s athleticism and defense were praised. One mock draft called him “Marcus Smart Lite.” Former CelticsBlogger Kevin O’Connor ranked him the #5 prospect in the draft, with a “shades of Jrue Holiday” remark.
An article on NBA.com projected him as going to the Jazz with the number 10 pick with a few drafts placing him in the 11th spot and going to the Chicago Bulls.
Ultimately, Carter went to the Kings with the 13th pick.
The move was a somewhat baffling one, as the Kings were well-stocked with backcourt players, and, indeed, despite being considered ready to contribute based on his age and college experience, Carter appeared in just 36 games for the Kings, averaging 11 minutes per game, and generally failing to find a place with the team.
Carter appeared in 38 games in his second year with Sacramento, while drawing 12 spot starts. His minutes per game jumped to 18.4, and his two-point shooting percentage jumped to 51.1%, although his three-point shooting dipped to 26.3%. He had a couple stand-out games as a second-year player, notching 24 points in a victory over the rather hapless Pacers, and then 29 points and 9 rebounds against a Golden State team that was actually trying to win games last season.
In an indication of his poor fit with Sacramento, or perhaps the team’s inability to figure out what to do with him, his third-year option was picked up by the team before the start of his second year, but at the conclusion of that year, he was traded to Atlanta in exchange for the draft rights to Alpha Kaba. Less than two months after being acquired by the Hawks, he was waived by the team.
Despite a relatively unimpressive showing with Sacramento, he may be a good fit with a much better Boston team.
For starters, he seems to be in sync with Joe Mazzulla when it comes to expectations from young players. Joe has said that his primary focus for players with little pro experience are “can you play defense, can you execute a defensive system, and can you rebound?”
At the NBA draft combine, Carter prioritized one thing: “defense — it’s going to get you on the court.” He said that his priority is defense, adding, “I especially don’t like my man to score.” Devin also made rebounding a point of emphasis in his final season in college. “My sophomore year my coaches were telling me I could rebound, my freshman year my coaches were telling me I could rebound, my junior year, I actually committed to crashing the rebound every shot.” The result was a 3.8 rebound per game jump.
After being drafted, Carter told reporters, “I’m going to dive on the floor, take charges, anything we need to do to win.” He also emphasized his willingness to do “all the dirty work” needed to win. At his introductory press conference, he hit the right notes again, saying, he was going to bring “toughness, grittiness, and a will to win” to the court.
“If you’re not scoring,” he said at the press conference, “if you’re not doing anything else, you can at least guard and take that personally.”
“You want to give the coach a reason to play you, and every coach wants somebody who plays defense.”
Carter seems to be one of those players that needs the right situation and the right coaches to thrive. In two partial seasons with the Kings, his VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) was -.1 both years, and as the ‘replacement player’ in VORP is not a league-average player, his raw and advanced numbers suggest that he’s a bust.
But remember that Neemias Queta’s VORP at Sacramento was -.1 and 0 during his two years there, and that jumped to a 2.4 VORP with Boston last season. Queta’s BPM (Box Score Plus/Minus), which uses a league average player as a baseline, was -4.8 at Sacramento, as compared to a -2.8 BPM for Carter.
Given that the Carter prides himself on his defense, and that the Celtics have a top-notch player development staff and, apparently, far more patience than the Kings, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to project Devin as a potentially valuable contributor down the road.
