The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Allen reflects on two New England fan bases
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — From under his orange Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame suit jacket, Ray Allen gave a faint smile Thursday and decided the words “interesting dichotomy” would fit.
The greatest 3-point shooter in the game’s history is nothing if not a perfectionist and he knows perfectly well that he could go anywhere in Connecticut and people will find him to tell him how wonderful he was at UConn, how wonderful he has been every day since and how he can do no wrong.
He knows, too, he can jump in his car, drive an hour or so into Massachusetts and some people will find him to tell him how wonderful he isn’t. That he’s a traitor to Boston and to the Celtics for leaving for the dreaded Miami Heat and LeBron James and he can do no right.
Yet on the weekend when he is inducted among the immortals of the game, basketball fans on both sides of the New England border and everywhere else can agree there is one place where opponents never wanted to see Ray Allen.
Open on a basketball court. “I think one of the biggest compliments I’ve received is some coaches used to call me, ‘Oh, Spit (we changed one letter for family consumption),’ ” Allen said. “If I ever ended up open on the floor, they’d say, ‘Oh, Spit,’ how did he get open?
“Often times when I was running down the floor the coach on the other team would be yelling at his team, ‘Do not leave him! I don’t care what you do! Do not leave him!’ The guy that was guarding me was so paranoid, because up until this moment his mentality, his idea of playing defense was help, sink in all these things. I kind of changed the mold in his mind on how he’s supposed to play defense.”
And how did it go with a defender?
“He’s like, ‘I’m not going to leave him. I’m not going to leave him. I’m not going leave home.’ The ball goes up and he turns and looks. That was his mistake. He took his eye off me. He looks back, we’ve got the rebound. I’m in a different place. I shoot a 3. Now the coach takes him out of the game.”
And, well, “Oh Spit.” “Things like that were always a validation for me of my position and my impact on the game,” Allen said. “It changed the flow of how defenses play. Even if they didn’t send a double team, the defense still shifted, because they knew I was on the floor.”
Growing up a military brat, coming to UConn out of Dalzell, S.C., he said he’d never seen a pro athlete, didn’t know what he sounded like, looked like, walked like. The NBA? He was trying to figure out how to get to college. Even in the NBA, he insisted that he didn’t believe the Hall of Fame was possible, because the criteria set by coaches and media can change year to year, decade to decade.
Ray Allen had his own criteria.
“Prepare so well that when I’m done I have no regrets,” Allen said.
Early in his freshman
year at UConn, Jim Calhoun asked him what he wanted to be. Allen told him he wanted to be the best. Once he knew that, the Hall of Fame coach reminded Allen that on that quest he had to do things others didn’t want to do. Allen called it “the constant stream of accountability,” right down, yes, to a good breakfast.
From there he sacrificed. He learned to condition himself. He learned what to eat and what not to eat. He calls his induction Friday night into the Hall of Fame the summation of all the great people in his life who continued to push him. Early on, he said his mom especially helped give him confidence. He said UConn gave him the wings to learn how to fly and to not accept mediocrity.
His goal? Not to hit the NBA record of 2,973 3s, or score 24,505 points (24th all-time). His goal, he said, was to be a duck.
“Paddling ferociously under water, on the surface looked as calm and cool as possible,” Allen said. “I always wanted to be that guy who you never saw sweating. I wanted to be the guy that never was with his hands on his knees. I might have been exhausted, but I would never show it.
“I remember my freshman year at UConn I was at the Field House and Brian Fair, Donyell Marshall
and Scott Burrell were shooting and they didn’t miss a shot. Going around the horn, knocking them down, knocking them down, And, ‘I’m like how do they do that?’ ”
He found his answer. Work at it. Not hit one or two. Hit 50 consistently, be ready to hit the big shot in the fourth quarter when everybody is tired. Don’t allow your body to let you down. And so he didn’t.
Still, it was not until 2008 that he would win a championship with the Celtics. And on this day, he admits he didn’t know what it took to win a title.
“I thought I did,” Allen said. “We talked about winning a championship, all of us, every player in the league, but until you win one, you look back and say, wow, I actually didn’t know it would be that hard. I had no idea.”
He talked about the immense pressure in 2008, going wire to wire and treating every loss as if it was the low of all lows. He embraced it. Boston embraced him. And that’s what made it so messy when Allen would win a second NBA title in Miami with LeBron, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh and the bickering over his departure remains to this day. He has made a peace with Paul Pierce, but Kevin Garnett and Rajon Rondo? Not such much. Earlier this week, their coach Doc Rivers was still saying he regrets everything wasn’t mended.
I asked Allen about the difference from Connecticut to Boston and that’s when he talked about the “interesting dichotomy.” He talked about the circumstantial nature of sports and how rivalries and biases are engrained in us. He loves Connecticut. Connecticut loves him. But Boston?
“People look at how I left, but I look at how I lived while I was there,” Allen said. “That, to me, was the most important time in my life because I had never won and I was able to win. That’s the most important thing I want people to always remember. The time we spent together.
“Now I do understand the angst that people have toward me because they loved it so much, because I was part of the community and I was part of everything and part of winning. But, like we all know, it becomes such a business that you ultimately have to decide when it's time to fold up the tent and move on.”
And when he finally stopped moving Ray Allen found himself enshrined forever, fittingly, near the border of Connecticut and Massachusetts.