Ray Allen was one of the best marksmen of all time. His trio in the 2013 finals against San Antonio Spurs remains unforgotten. The Shooting Guard was one of the hardest workers in the league, leaving nothing to chance. Together with Steve Nash, Grant Hill and Jason Kidd, the 43-year-old will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on Friday.
“The pitch is one thing. To make it fly, you have to get into position first. That happens in training and it means more to me than anything.”
Ray Allen humbly admits himself in the days before his admission to the Hall of Fame. Countless times he is asked about his famous litter in Game 6 of the 2013 finals, when the Miami Heat forced the extra time thanks to an Allen-three and prevented the San Antonio Spurs’ title.
It is probably the most important litter of modern times – almost logically transformed by one of the best shooters of all time, who also had such a perfect, pure jumper as the league had rarely seen before. Even in this pressure situation shortly before the watch expired, the execution was perfect, almost mechanical. A little falling, the splitting high above the head, a fast, soft squeeze – and swish!
Allen was already 37 years old, in the late autumn of his career and beside the Big Three around LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh only a role player. A specialist, a damn good one, though. His success was not by chance, as Allen emphasized again and again. “The fans only watch the games, but it was the training sessions that made me this player.”
Allen got to know hard work already in his early childhood. The father devoted himself to the military, the Allen family followed the head of the family at every turn. Little Ray spent his early years in California, England, Germany and later in South Carolina, where he also attended high school.
“My dad went to work every day with duty, he had no choice,” Allen told nba.com. This also fed the attitude of the shooter to his later profession, the will to always want to improve drove Allen to top performances.
In the only so talent dripping draft of 1996 with a total of four (coming) Hall of Famers, Allen was drawn to number five by the Minnesota Timberwolves, but immediately passed on to the Milwaukee Bucks in exchange with Stephon Marbury.
But the Bucks didn’t realize that they got the later All-Time Leader for the three-point throws. “At the beginning of my career, the coaches told me not to throw from outside and attack the basket,” Allen said.
Because what goes down a little in retrospect is that Allen was much more than a shooter. No one has yet scored 24,505 career points (24th All-Time) only with jumpers. Especially in the early years Allen was an outstanding athlete, who was also invited to the Slam Dunk Contest and could attack the zone with his drives again and again. Allen finally became a star in 1998 with his role as Jesus Shuttlesworth alongside Denzel Washington in the film “He Got Game” by Spike Lee.
Only with the team did not want to be successful at first. The Bucks were then a child of the cellar and it took until 1999 before Milwaukee could be respected again. With George Karl came an offensive guru as coach, plus the Bucks for Point Guard Sam Cassell, who formed a small Big Three with Allen and the former No.1 pick Glenn Robinson.
“When George Karl came, we played faster right away. If a good litter was possible, we were always allowed to take it.” Allen’s strengths had a better impact, and in the 2001/02 season he pulled away almost eight times per game – with odds of over 40 percent.
In the decimated East, the Bucks turned into a top team, which ultimately just missed the finals. The 2001 Conference Finals against the Philadelphia 76ers for Allen Iverson were highly competitive and controversial. Milwaukee felt severely disadvantaged by the referees several times, so that Karl and Allen had to pay 85,000 dollars for referee criticism in the course of the series.
So this Bucks team was wrongly quickly forgotten, as was perhaps the best series Allen played in his career. In seven games, the Shooting Guard scored 190 points and set a new play-off record with nine converted threes (41 points) in Game 6, a do-or-die game.
In his book From the Outside: My Journey through Life and the Game I Love, Allen was still bitter about this outcome 17 years later. “They had the best Sixth Man (Aaron McKie), the best defender (Dikembe Mutombo) and the MVP (Iverson). We were the little Milwaukee Bucks. Everybody was talking about ratings back then, and we just weren’t interesting enough as a small market team.”
As a result, the Bucks fell apart quickly. Anthony Mason’s commitment destroyed the team chemistry, while the enigmatic Allen became a scapegoat for Karl. Before his trade, the coach is said to have called Allen a “Barbie doll that always wants to be pretty”.
With all his qualities, Allen was also a difficult character who later in his career was more of a loner than his best friend. The Guard dedicated himself to basketball, and relationships sometimes fell by the wayside, which was also reflected later on his departure from the Boston Celtics.
In 2003 Allen was traded to Seattle against Gary Payton, where Ray Ray was the undisputed star under coach Nate McMillan but lacked support. In 2006 he set a new record with 269 triples in one season, but it was still not enough for the postseason. In just over four years, only one play-off appearance emerged, even though Allen rated the time with the Sonics as the best of his career. “I had the most fun in Seattle, we were a young team learning how to win.”
Page 1: A litter for eternity, young star in Milwaukee
Page 2: The Hunt for the Wrestling with the Superteams