Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Ex-Heat guard Allen heads to Hall of Fame
Telephone call is ‘something dreams are made of’
MIAMI — Ray Allen, who converted arguably the most famous shot in the Miami Heat’s 30 seasons, has been elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, it was announced Saturday at the NCAA Final Four in San Antonio.
Allen, whose NBA career ended with the Heat in 2013-14, converted the 3-pointer in Game 6 of the 2013 NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs that forced overtime and eventually allowed the Heat to emerge with the franchise’s third championship in Game 7.
He said he was humbled when he learned of his selection this past week:
“I was in between doing promotions for my book,” he said in a televised ESPN interview shortly after the formal announcement was made. “I was in New York and the phones kept ringing and I didn’t know who it was. And we don’t answer a call that we don’t know which name it is. I was like, ‘This was 413, I better answer.’ ”
That is the area code for Springfield, Mass., where the Hall of Fame is located.
“I took a step back. I was almost like one of those conversations or phone calls that it knocks the wind out of you a little bit, because you can’t believe what is being said,” he said. “And I don’t know how happened, but my phone came up and it said, when I looked at it underneath, it said, ‘Hall of Fame,’ and I was like, ‘The Hall of Fame is calling me.’
“You know, we’ve been humbled to play this game and we’ve been certainly privileged. But to get a phone call from the Hall of Fame to say you’ve been inducted, it’s something that dreams are made of. We realized that if we didn’t play this game to make money, we’d play it because we loved it, we enjoyed the camaraderie.”
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said the photo of Allen’s iconic shot in the hallway between the Heat locker room at AmericanAirlines Arena at the court serves as a reminder of how a single moment can change everything.
“I touch that photo every day,” Spoelstra said before his team faced the Brooklyn Nets in the third game of a four-game homestand. “Grateful for Ray and his obsessive-compulsive work ethic to work on that shot thousands and thousands of times, when everybody else would think that was too ridiculous a circumstance to actually try to practice something like that.
“That will go down as one of the most iconic shots in NBA history. And it was just an absolute blessing to be part of that moment, to be part of that team. I’m grateful I had an opportunity to coach a Hall of Fame player and person as Ray.”
Allen, who spent two seasons with the Heat, spent the first seven seasons of his NBA career with the Milwaukee Bucks, followed by five seasons with the Seattle SuperSonics, five with the Boston Celtics and then the two with the Heat.
Allen becomes the latest player with Heat ties to make it to Springfield, following Alonzo Mourning, Gary Payton and Shaquille O’Neal. Heat president Pat Riley also is enshrined for his coaching accomplishments.
“He’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer for his whole career, two-time champion,” Spoelstra said. “He could be Hall of Fame off the court as well for all the work he’s done for his foundations and all the cities he’s been in and those foundations are still up and running not only here and still in Boston he still has a presence in all the cities he’s played.”
A 10-time All-Star, Allen also won a championship with the Celtics in 2008. He is the NBA career leader in 3-point field goals made (2,973) and is ranked sixth on the all-time freethrow percentage list (.894).
He spoke Saturday of the pride and detail he put into his shooting.
“I had this insane feeling when I sat at home that I wouldn’t make a shot the next day,” he said. “So it was always like — you get up in the morning, you got to run in the gym and go shoot free throws, go shoot threes. And I even did it at halftime sometimes, or during timeouts, in games. Because I always had that nervous feeling that I wouldn’t be good that night.”
He said being good was about more than repetitions. It was about the right repetitions.
“Well, that’s the misconception,” he said Saturday, “because people think ... some guys say, ‘I shot 500 shots today.’ And I always say, if you took 500 shots, I’ll show you 500 bad shots. ‘I want you to shoot 50 to 100 game shots, fourthquarter shots,’ and that’s what I tried to work on every single day.”
Allen will be joined in the 2018 Hall of Fame class by former NBA stars Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Maurice Cheeks, Charlie Scott and Grant Hill. Also to be inducted will be longtime college basketball coach Lefty Driesell, women’s basketball standouts Katie Smith, Tina Thompson and Ora Mae Washington, former NBA executive Rod Thorn, current NBA executive Rick Welts and European standout Dino Radja.
The Hall of Fame inductions will be Sept. 6-8 in Springfield.
Allen has remained in South Florida since his retirement, having founded the “Grown” organic restaurant chain along with his wife, Shannon.
He spoke Saturday of how his college coach, Jim Calhoun at UConn, convinced him to make a healthy lifestyle a priority.
“He said, ‘If you want to last long, you have to take care of your body and pay attention to what you put into it,’ ” Allen, 42, said. “So those words always stuck with me my whole career. So I always paid attention in every single game. If I felt sluggish in the first quarter: What was I eating? How did I sleep that night or that evening when I rested? Everything. Because, as athletes, we can’t use a bicycle, we can’t use a club or anything. Our bodies are our commodities.”