Why Ray Allen (and any other NBA player) can do whatever he wants It’s a universally known fact that sports fans are hard to please. That could be an understatement. Sports fans are ridiculously hard to please. Yeah, that sounds better. Professional athletes have to put up with fans harrasing them from verbal taunting at games to cat-calling while they’re walking around rival cities. With the emergence of social media, it has become easier for fans to at least try to communicate with their favorite players. On the flip side, it has also become easier for fans to express their criticism towards a player and his/her actions and decisions. The worst part about all of this is no matter what professional athletes do, their status as public figures prevents them from having any immunity from external judgment. As self-made multi-millionaires at relatively young ages, every single decision a professional athlete makes is put under a microscope. Every success is highlighted, every failure magnified. Young players who grumble about not getting enough playing time are often labeled as headcases and locker-room nightmares who need a stern authority figure to tell them to earn their playing time. Players who use the media to ask for a trade because of internal issues are called disrespectful and imprudent. Lesser-respected players who sign with a different team just because they prefer its climate, state tax laws, or just because that team can give them the most money are called disloyal and unwilling to sacrifice for the greater good. Players who fancy themselves as brand ambassadors and businessmen are looked down upon by the pure sports fan with a certain level of resentment because these players have reduced the sport to endorsements and brand figures. As fans, we like to think that we don’t ask for a lot from the athletes we idolize. We just ask that they stay true to the sport. We ask for excellence, or at least the drive to pursue that excellence. We ask that they do it by carrying themselves with honor because for most sports fans, their idols on the court are their heroes. But what happens when your hero leaves your team and goes to the rival, which is in an infinitely better place to win a championship? When LeBron James signed with Miami in 2010 and announced it via The Decision, it was widely viewed as one of, if not, the biggest betrayal in basketball history, at least in Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert’s eyes. LeBron had the convenience of playing less than 64 kilometers from his hometown and was adored in Cleveland as a local hero for singlehandedly changing the landscape of professional basketball in a historically unlucky sports town. He won two MVPs as a Cavalier and took a mediocre 2007 squad to the NBA Finals almost entirely by himself. And he broke up with the Cavaliers and the city of Cleveland on worldwide television in a grandiose display of self-promotion, without any remorse, to team up with fellow All-Stars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami to win championships as a super-team. Poised to become the best player in the NBA for the next several years, LeBron James voluntarily teamed up with his rivals to be the alpha dogs of the league. Their mandate: to dominate the NBA and to win “not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven” championships. In the process, LeBron James, and the Miami Heat by association, became the NBA’s go-to villain. The Heat represented the idea that a championship-caliber team can be bought, and not just constructed as the Spurs or Thunder would like you to believe. Brash and audacious, Pat Riley pretty much embodied the Miami Heat organization and its aspirations to win at all costs. Who cares about loyalty when you’re winning multiple championships in South Beach? There were several reasons why LeBron bolted for Miami: the key ones being that Cleveland’s brass could never surround him with the talent he needed to win it all. As head coach, Mike Brown looked seemingly more lost as each year passed in how he could keep LeBron and his entourage happy. Miami was better for LeBron in every aspect, from having his Redeem Team buddies as teammates instead of foes, to the state tax laws, the warmer climate, and Pat Riley’s commitment to constructing a championship-caliber roster. And then there’s Ray Allen. Here’s a guy who, for the first eleven years of his career, could never be the number one option on a team that went deep into the playoffs. When the Big Three was assembled in Boston in 2007, they were showered with praise for putting their egos aside so they could win a championship with each other and for each other. Here were three superstars who suddenly found themselves getting used to a smaller role and not complaining about it because they were focused on one goal: to win the NBA Championship. One may argue that the summer of 2007 for Boston was similar to what the summer of 2010 was for Miami. But here’s the difference: whereas LeBron and Bosh voluntarily left their old teams to sign with the Heat, the Big Three of Boston was constructed mostly from the executive level. Allen was traded to Boston along with a second-round pick (which turned out to be Glen Davis) in exchange for the fifth pick that year (Jeff Green). He never asked for a trade out of Seattle. And it was only when Allen became a Celtic did Kevin Garnett even allow then-Timberwolves GM Kevin McHale to trade him to Boston. Given the choice, Garnett would probably have retired a Timberwolf. Together with coach Doc Rivers, they led Celtics teams that people got behind because it was easy rooting for aging superstars who have teamed up to win the one thing they haven’t won before. Their rallying cry of “Ubuntu!” emphasized unity and singularity of the big goal: to win it all. The Ubuntu era in Boston was characterized by gritty defense, sacrificing for the greater achievement, and coming together as one team. When Allen defected to Miami by turning down the larger contract offer from Boston, Celtics fans were outraged. Most observers saw it coming given his reported feud with Rajon Rondo and his diminished role in the rotation with the emergence of Avery Bradley. Allen – who played third banana to Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, and didn’t mind being just “the sharpshooter” after Rondo emerged as an elite point guard – took less money to sign with the Heat as a role player. And for what? For one more shot to win the NBA Championship... and a better one, at that. Many Celtics fans called him many variations of the word “traitor”, and some of the most diehard would go so far as to say that Allen didn’t deserve to have his jersey retired in Boston because he defected to Miami. It seemed so sacrilegious to think of Allen playing with the same guys who threw a bash complete with smoke machines and confetti, without even having played a single game together. Allen, the consummate professional, who was generally liked inside and outside the NBA, would be helping LeBron and co. win some of those eight championships. As a Celtics fan, it hurt seeing Ray in a Heat jersey. It killed me to see him drain 3s against the Celtics. It broke my heart to see KG act like a jerk towards him whenever the Celtics played the Heat. Allen was still the same player we watched all these years, the guy with the tireless work ethic, who became the most prolific shooter in the NBA. He just happened to be playing for the “bad guys”. But should that really affect the way we remember him after his career is over? When Allen retires, he will have his name in the record books as the player who made the most 3-point field goals in league history. He deserves to have his jersey number retired. Barring a Brooklyn Nets championship run in 2013-14, he will always have one more ring than Truth or KG. But as NBA fans, will our lasting memory of Allen be that of one of the “bad guys” on that stacked 2012-13 Miami Heat championship team? In The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent said at least twice, “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Prior to the unceremonious disbandment of the Ubuntu era Celtics, I always thought that KG and Pierce would “die” as heroes who continued to slug it out in Celtic green because of their unwavering loyalty to the Celtics. One question that deserves to be asked right now is, why was there so much backlash over Allen signing with Miami last year? Why so much rage over a player deciding that he would rather play for another team? In this day and age, when everyone from executives to coaches to players to beat writers to wannabe columnists all concede that playing in the NBA is just business, why did Celtics fans like me feel that we were entitled to so much anger over Allen leaving Boston? When Gary Payton was traded to Milwaukee after playing 999 career games for Seattle, I’m sure many Sonics fans were upset to see him leave. They watched him grow from his rookie season and develop into a superstar, and would have been fine with seeing him retire as a SuperSonic even if he never won a championship for the team. Same goes for the Timberwolves fans who surely would have been irate at Kevin McHale for trading KG to Boston in 2007. Garnett is a guy who has been characterized for years as “loyal to a fault”. He’s the superstar who willingly stuck it out in ‘Sota even as their management failed year after year to give him the pieces he needed to carry a championship contender. If fans are going to have the right to feel entitled to a player on their team, ideally, this has to be limited to only the players their team drafted. If Paul Pierce forced his way out of Boston to get to Brooklyn, then Celtics fans, who called him one of their own since 1998, have the right to be up in arms against him. Why, then, is there so much anger towards a player like Allen, who the Celtics only acquired, essentially, as a mercenary? After all, players aren’t always loyal to their teams, and teams aren’t always loyal to their players. That’s just a truth in this day and age of everything being part of the business. We go back to the concept of Ubuntu for this to have an answer. When Doc came up with Ubuntu, he didn’t just unite 15 players in that Celtics locker room. He united an entire organization, the city of Boston, and the entire fanbase of the Boston Celtics the world over. He gave them a united rallying cry and a reason to call every one of those players from the stars to the Scot Pollards and Allan Rays one of their own. So, when one of your own decides he doesn’t want to be there anymore and sticks it to you by dumping you for the rival, someone’s bound to get pissed. Allen became the villain by teaming up with James and the Superfriends so he could have one more shot at winning a title. He left Boston before that ship was blown up. One year after his defection, and especially after the Brooklyn-Boston trade, it looks like he did the smart thing by becoming the villain. For all intents and purposes, his move paid off and I bet now, more than ever, he feels like he did the right thing at the right time with the Heat being unquestionably the best team in the NBA in 2013. This brings me to the most important question of all. Why do we care? Why do we get so riled up by observing every move our favorite players make before our eyes? Why are we so emotionally invested in their fates as players and in the successes and failures of their careers? It could be because we see ourselves in these players, maybe not all of ourselves, but a lot of the defining traits in them that we identify with. We get behind certain players because they represent ideals and characteristics that are important to us. We idolize these players as heroes because they stand for something more than who they are and what they play for. That’s also the very reason why it was so difficult to see Allen as a member of the Miami Heat. Rayray symbolized the quiet pride of the athlete, a workhorse who never stopped trying to improve himself, even when he already reached his prime. As if that wasn’t enough to classify him as a hero, he was always stuck on teams that were good, but not great enough to win championships. He was an underdog – the cowboy who wore the white hat. To see him in a black hat – in those black Heat jerseys – was like seeing him turn on everything he stood for and fight for himself, which makes sense because everything he worked for all this time was for a chance to be a champion. In the end, that’s all that really matters to Allen and any other NBA player worth his sneakers. They play to win championships, and if signing on with the most dominant team in the league gives them a better chance to win, then who cares what anyone thinks? You can remember Allen as an underdog on those Bucks and Sonics teams. You can remember him as a hero who finally achieved his glory on that 2008 Celtics team. Or you can remember him as the turncoat who made that clutch 3-pointer in Game 6 of the 2013 NBA Finals to keep the Heat alive. No matter how you remember him as, it doesn’t change the fact that Allen is a two-time NBA Champion. And at the end of the day, winning is all that really matters to Ray Allen; and you would’ve done the same thing.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 12:01:19 +0000
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