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Ray Allen might be considering an NBA comeback after two years off
Now, we got a big one.
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Nothing against Ben Gordon, Flip Murray, Derek Fisher or Von Wafer; all NBA contributors to their varying degrees who shouldn’t be shamed for wanting to return to a top-notch lifestyle playing a game we all love. This is Ray Allen we’re talking about now, a likely Basketball Hall of Famer and the league’s all-time leader in three-pointers made. He hasn’t fully committed to putting his name out there for a comeback, but according to Ray he’s not far off.
Allen has been working out feverishly, no big news there for perhaps the most studious personal practice player of his generation. What is news is that he’s openly discussing his interest in returning to a league he hasn’t played in since the 2013-14 season. From a talk outside his yearly basketball camp in Connecticut, with Dom Amore at the Hartford Courant:
“I want to be in a situation where I thought I could help, play a little bit and help where they have good young talent.”
Amore passes along that Allen has spoken with the Boston Celtics, a team he won the 2008 NBA title with, and the Milwaukee Bucks – the squad that dealt for him on draft night some 20 years ago:
“I would love going back to those places if it worked out,” Allen said, “because both teams are good, too. It doesn’t necessarily have to be championship-or-bust for me to go back to the NBA.”
[…]
“My decision is predicated on what is available,” he said. “I said that I was interested because I never retired for a reason. I’ve been watching, seeing what teams have been doing and I’ve been waiting to see if the opportunity presented itself where I think I could fit.”
[…]
“At the start of the year, if nothing pans out, then basically I’ll retire,” he said.
Allen also relayed that “Spike Lee has been trying to recruit me” via text to play for Lee’s hometown New York Knicks, a far cry from the pager back-and-forth that probably took place in early 1997 when Lee was after Allen to play the nearly-titular role in the Lee-directed ‘He Got Game.’
Ray Allen broke Reggie Miller’s record for three-pointers made 5 1/2 years ago, but like Miller he easily could have been a significant contributor past the date in which he walked away from the game (Miller, ironically, nearly signed with Allen’s Celtics in a comeback bid in 2007).
Allen never officially retired in 2014, his contract with the Heat was up and with LeBron James leaving Miami the options that summer apparently did not seem all that enticing to the ten-time All-Star, who willingly came off the bench for two seasons in Miami.
Flirtations with the Cavaliers, former coach Doc Rivers’ Clippers and Spurs followed, but Allen sat out the 2015-16 season as well. Having just turned 41, with his role reduced to that of a three-point specialist and little else (and Allen shot for just above the league average in his final turn with the Heat: 37 percent), would teams still want to take a chance on a guy whose first NBA game not only came against someone being elected into the Basketball Hall of Fame next month, but also the guy who led the NBA in rebounding while Ronald Reagan was still president?
Well, yeah. He’s Ray Allen.
His attention to both detail in preparation and his own personal health and fitness routine is legendary. Yes, he shot “just” 37.5 percent in his final year with the Heat, but he shot nearly 42 percent the season before in the same role and his two seasons before that averaged out to around 45 percent from behind the arc. No, he’s not going to be able to switch up positions like James Jones, playing a stretch four in spots; but if James Jones is playing stretch four on your team it means you already employ LeBron James, and you’re doing just fine as it is.
Allen can come off the bench, even at age 41, and work as a limited-minute sniper. On teams desperate for shooting like the Celtics and (especially) the Jason Kidd-led Bucks, Allen would fit right in. He’d work wonders in Brad Stevens’ active Boston offense, and he won gold medals with Kidd at the 2003 FIBA Americas tournament and the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
It is a bit of a bummer that Allen wouldn’t be contributing these sorts of things at age 39, as would have been the case had he found a new team in the summer of 2014, but in many ways the years spent away from the grind paired with his usual workout routine could act as a blessing. And, for someone who made as much as his maximum salary would allow for 11 of his 18 seasons, this isn’t a cash-grab from an aging ex-player, drooling at the NBA’s spiraling new salary cap.
It’s Ray Allen, possibly looking to get back in the game.
Here’s to one more spin. Perfect spin, probably, followed with a swish.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
