He returned to Toronto last April 15 with a giant bull's-eye on his back, and Vince Carter took every sling and arrow they had for him.

The boos and insults were persistent, but that was only half the sensory overload. There were signs everywhere -- among them, "Half-man, half-snake," and "Vin-Sissy," and "Hey, I stole your mom's parking space" -- and somehow he blocked it all out.

"He handled it well," Jason Kidd recalled. "That was a big game for us. That game had a lot to do with our season, and it just showed the type of player Vince was in the second half of the season -- he was off the charts. And that game, he was definitely off the charts."

Actually, he was typically brilliant, scoring 39 points to help the Nets overcome a 16-point deficit and win by 11, which kept their playoff hopes alive in the final week of the regular season. Those 2 1/2 hours inside Air Canada Centre told the Nets all they needed to know about Carter, and perhaps it taught him a little about himself.

"It was fun," Carter said yesterday as he prepared for another visit to the ACC tomorrow night. "We were on the winning side and we were making our playoff push, so it was an important game for us for a lot of reasons. I actually had a pretty good night, from the second part of the first quarter."

"Don't get me wrong -- I miss the city," he said. "I'll be the first to tell you that. I really enjoyed it. I put a lot of time in there. I had a lot of places and people I was close friends with, like (minority owner) Larry Tanenbaum. I hated to leave the city. It was just something I had to do."