From the Outside

by Ray Allen

  The fact that our son was diagnosed while I was on the biggest stage of my career was no accident; it was the very stage we could use to save lives.

  The organization back home was unbelievable. They arranged for a private jet to take us to Boston the next day, and they made sure we met with doctors at the Joslin Center, the top diabetes research facility in the world. The concern the Celtics showed was something Shannon and I will always remember.

  And oh, by the way, there was still Game 6 of the NBA Finals, the next biggest game of my life, to be played.

  Some wondered, once word got around, if I would play. I certainly would, and mostly that was due to the amazing help we got for Walker. He was feeling good enough to sit on Shannon’s lap during the entire game. Every time I looked over, I was reminded of how grateful I was that he wasn’t taken from us.

  So here we are. The game.

  We traded baskets for the first quarter, and for the first five minutes or so of the second. Until we made our move.

  A three by James Posey. A three by Eddie House. Two free throws by Eddie. Another three by James. The lead was suddenly 14 points, and by the half, 23.

  Nonetheless, we didn’t get ahead of ourselves. We came back from 20 down in their building, so there was no reason to think they couldn’t come back from 20 down in ours. As usual, the key to maintaining a lead like that is to tell yourself the game is tied. It’s not easy, human nature being what it is.

  “The first shot you miss,” we used to say, “is the first pass to the other team’s fast break.”

  Whatever we told ourselves, it worked. After three quarters, we were up by 29. Now we just had to wait for the horn to let it all out.

  The final: Celtics 131, Lakers 92. There would be another banner to hang with the others.

  My emotions were all over the place that night, and for days to come. Too much had happened in the last year, in the last week, for them not to be.

  I felt totally vindicated. After each season before, I’d watched other teams play for a title and felt unworthy, like I had cheated the ownership and the city I played for. They were paying me an obscene amount of money, but what, precisely, was I giving them in return? Not a championship. Not even a trip to the Finals.

  Now, at last, I could sit home, think of the owners, and tell myself: “I did what you brought me here to do.” In Game 6, I hit seven of nine threes to finish with 26 points.

  I finally had an answer for the fans as well. Every summer I would hear the same question: “What happened to you guys this year?”

  “Wait until next year,” I would tell them, and believe me, I got sick of saying it.

  I didn’t leave the Garden until about four in the morning. At one point, Paul, KG, and I sat together in the locker room, no other players around. I don’t recall what we said, but I recall how we felt. All those years of losing and now this.

  And yet, as the days wore on, there was a part of me that felt empty, and it wasn’t because Walker getting sick proved how little basketball meant compared to real life; I knew that already. It had more to do with having always believed that when you win a championship you’re transported to some new, exalted place. What I realized was that you are the same person you were before, and that if you are not content with who you are, a championship, or any accomplishment, isn’t going to change that.

  My favorite part of winning the title wasn’t hugging my teammates, or watching the fans celebrate. It was standing on the podium with Walker in my arms. His eyes were red. He was tired. He had been through so much for someone so young, so little. But I knew he would be fine, and that we would take care of him.

  A few days later, we went on the Duck Boat, this time as a championship team. I was blown away at how many people turned out to revel in the moment. Up in the high-rises and down in the alleys, in block after block, they were everywhere.

  I thought back to the ride in October, when it was just Doc, Paul, KG, and myself.

  When there was nothing more than a dream.

  13

  So Close, and Yet . . .

  We pulled the ropes, sliding the banner into the place it would occupy forever.

  Another opening night in Boston Garden. Another chance to celebrate.

  The fans had been waiting since 1986 for the next banner to go up, and now that it had happened and another season was here, the question was: Could we do it again?

  It would be a tougher task than winning it the first time, and that’s true in every sport. The other teams, studying your blueprint for success, try to copy you. Then there’s the challenge of how to manage your own expectations, as individuals and as a team. They’re not the same as they were before. Michael Jordan put it best when I ran into him that summer. “You guys got lucky,” he told me. “Winning one is lucky. Winning two, now you would be doing something.”

  I felt a little uncomfortable discussing the subject with MJ. I wasn’t in his league. He had six championships; I had one. Still, I listened. How could I not?

  “The major problem you’re going to have to worry about is your role players not wanting to play their roles anymore,” Michael went on. “They go home after the season, and everybody tells them how great they are, and it goes to their heads. They come back and want more minutes and more shots.”

  Only time would tell if that would happen to us.

  Speaking of roles, I took on a new one myself that summer. The role of husband.

  Shannon and I were vacationing on July 4 on Martha’s Vineyard when the idea of getting married occurred to us. A month later, in front of about 40 friends and family, we said our vows. I fell in love that night at the All Star Café in New York, and the love was deeper than ever.

  On opening night, we picked up our rings, sprinkled with diamonds and emeralds, and got back to work, knocking off Cleveland, 90–85. We did it without James Posey, who had signed a four-year contract with the New Orleans Hornets for $25 million. James would now have two rings to show his teammates.

  Losing James, who could hit the three besides playing excellent defense, was a blow, but we still had our core and a strong bench—as we saw on opening night, when Leon Powe scored 13 points and Tony Allen added 11.

  In mid-November, after a rare setback at home, to Denver, we went on a tear and didn’t lose again until Christmas Day, to the Lakers in Los Angeles, the streak ending at 19, the longest in franchise history. We were 27-3, the same record we had at this point in the season before. Maybe Michael was wrong.

  He wasn’t.

  Rondo, Perk, and Glen “Big Baby” Davis, a backup forward, demanded larger roles. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. You want to have players with ambition. KG, Paul, and I had our max contracts and All-Star Game appearances. Far be it from us to tell them they shouldn’t go after the same rewards.

  Only having a larger role should happen naturally, in the flow of the offense. If, on a given night, depending on the matchups, that means fewer shots or less playing time, so be it.

  Take Big Baby, who wanted more touches. When he got the ball, he often took shots before we were able to develop any kind of rhythm, and Doc had to sit him down. Perk also wanted more touches, and I tried to accommodate him—too much, apparently. Stop throwing the ball to Perk, Doc told me. As for Rondo, he was becoming one heck of a point guard, although he too was seeking a more prominent role, altering the dynamic that worked so well for us in 2008.

  So, even though we were 41-9 in early February, on another streak at 12 wins and counting, I didn’t have quite the same feeling about the direction we were heading in as I had the year before. No Ubuntu in this group. Too often we had to remind guys to move the ball around, instead of looking out for themselves. The final extra pass in each possession—no one did it better than the Spurs—is usually the one that gives you the best look at the basket. The pass we weren’t making.

  Then, two weeks later, it happened, what I feared most in 2008.

  In a game agai
nst the Utah Jazz, KG hurt his leg going for an alley-oop. He had to sit out a few weeks. We hoped he’d be ready for the playoffs, but the grimace on his face whenever I saw him was not a very encouraging sign. We would have to defend our title without him.

  Defending it began in earnest in a first-round matchup against the Bulls. You couldn’t have asked for more suspense. Four of the games went to overtime, including an unbelievable Game 6 in Chicago. Up three games to two, we were looking to close them out.

  I could not have played any better that night, scoring 29 points . . . in the first half! More than the rest of the team combined.

  Nonetheless, we were trailing, 59–57. I went through a difficult stretch in the third quarter but, in the fourth, scored nine points on a 23–3 run that helped us rally from a 12-point deficit. I hit a 17-footer with about two minutes left to put us up by five, though the Bulls staged a comeback of their own to tie it at 101.

  We called time. Twenty-nine seconds to go.

  Doc drew up a play for Paul. In other circumstances, I would’ve had no problem with the call, since Paul was a sensational one-on-one player.

  I had a problem this time. As hot as I was—I would finish with 51 points—I was the most logical choice to take the shot. Paul, conversely, was struggling; he would end up five of 13. We tried to get him going, but it was just one of those nights.

  Whatever I was thinking, I kept my mouth shut. Remember when Scottie Pippen sat out the last 1.8 seconds of a playoff game in 1994 after Phil Jackson called for Toni Kukoc to take the final shot? Michael was playing baseball at the time. Taking himself out of the game is part of Scottie’s legacy, and he has to live with it. Kukoc, by the way, hit the shot as the Bulls beat the Knicks.

  Unfortunately, there was no happy ending for us.

  Paul missed, and we lost in triple overtime, 128–127. I’m not saying I would have made the shot. You can never say that. Only that I liked my chances.

  That loss hurt, and with one more, we’d be done. Yet, having been in this position the season before on two occasions and survived, we believed in ourselves—and came through again by defeating the Bulls in Game 7, 109–99. Eddie House went five for five, including four threes.

  On to the conference semifinals against the Orlando Magic.

  That was where not having KG was a killer. Big Baby tried his best. He even won a game for us, Game 4, hitting a jump shot at the buzzer to square the series. But he wasn’t KG. He couldn’t rotate over quickly enough to cover Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis, my former teammate in Seattle, on the perimeter. Rasheed and Turkoglu couldn’t miss, and we never knew where the next shot was coming from.

  In that series, by the way, their players did something I had never seen before. While they were in the layup line prior to tip-off, they danced and held a dunk contest. In the playoffs!

  “They’re taking this as a joke,” I told the guys.

  Joking around or not, the Magic blew us out in Game 7 at the Garden. So much for defending our title.

  I don’t like to make excuses, but I can’t help but feel that if KG hadn’t been injured, we would have come out of the East and met the Lakers, the eventual champions, in the Finals again. Man, that would have been fun.

  Then, in 2009–10, came a season to remember. And an ending to forget.

  We started out strong once again. Six in a row. Twenty of 24. Twenty-seven of 37. KG was his old self, while Rondo made plays at both ends of the court you don’t see other point guards make. Even so, we went through some tough times beginning in mid-January. During one stretch, we dropped six of eight.

  Doc, as usual, found a way to motivate us.

  We were in the locker room at Staples, having just beaten the Lakers, 87–86, although there was no reason to get overly excited: Kobe didn’t play.

  “Guys, we’re going to be back here,” Doc told us, meaning the Finals. “I want each of you to give me $100, and we’ll come back in June to collect.”

  Everyone contributed, including players, coaches, and team managers, bringing the total to a couple thousand. Doc put the cash in an envelope, got up on a chair, and hid it under one of the ceiling tiles.

  “Obviously, you can’t tell anyone,” he said.

  I thought it was brilliant. Coaching is about more than drawing up X’s and O’s and making the correct substitutions. Coaching is about having a certain mind-set, an unwillingness to surrender, and getting your players to fully buy in. And now that we had invested in ourselves, we had to follow through.

  A few weeks later, at a hotel ballroom in Cleveland, he was even more emphatic.

  “This thing is doable,” Doc said, showing us the schedule for the rest of the season. “Who in this conference can beat us? Which one of these teams you afraid of?” No one said a word.

  He went on: “We’re not going to get home-court advantage, so we’ll have to win on somebody’s floor to get a championship. Tell me if anyone in this room believes it’s not doable.”

  Again, not a word. When Doc was finished, the guys were ready to storm the beaches at Normandy.

  In the first round, we took care of the Heat in five games. So far so good. Then came LeBron and the Cavaliers, the number 1 seed in the East. Most people didn’t give us a chance. Cleveland had won 61 games that season, 11 more than we did.

  The Cavs took Game 1, 101–93. But thanks to 19 assists from Rondo, we squared the series in Game 2, only to give home-court right back when they beat us at the Garden by 29. That must have woken us up, as we captured the next three to win it in six.

  The Magic were next. We got revenge for 2009, that series ending in six as well. Doc was right: this was doable. Only one test remained: the Lakers.

  It promised to be quite a series.

  When we arrived at Staples, there was something we needed to pick up before practice started. The cash hidden in the ceiling, of course. Doc shut the door.

  “Everyone gather around,” he said. “We’re back here, just like we said we were going to be.”

  He stood on a chair, retrieved the envelope, and handed us our money. Now it was time to go after the real prize.

  For me, Games 2 and 3 will always stand out, for vastly different reasons.

  We needed Game 2 badly. In Game 1, the Lakers had defeated us, 102–89, Kobe with 30 points, seven rebounds, and six assists. Unless we took the next one, we’d fall behind two games to none, leaving little margin for error.

  I was feeling pretty optimistic, being used to having good games against the Lakers, and against the Western Conference teams in general. The bigs in the West didn’t defend the pick-and-rolls the way the bigs in the East did. They stayed in the paint. When I came off a pick, I would usually get a clean look at the basket. A shooter can’t ask for anything more. Except, obviously, for the shots to fall in.

  Which was what happened in Game 2. I scored 32 points, hitting eight of 11 threes in a 103–94 victory. Back to Boston we went. Win the three games there, and we’d hang another banner—one that, a few months before, no one could have seen coming.

  First we had to win Game 3. We didn’t, and that was on me.

  The numbers were ugly enough—zero for 13, eight of which were threes—but it was my approach heading into the game that set me back. I figured the Lakers would defend me the way they defended me in Game 2. They didn’t. Every time I came off a screen, somebody was in my face. They weren’t going to let me go off for 32 again.

  “Stay on Allen,” Phil Jackson kept urging his guys. “Don’t let him get open.”

  I should have done what I learned from George Karl and let the game come to me. Don’t rush your shot. Try one from midrange. Give them a pump fake and drive into the lane. Get someone else a look. Anything but keep launching threes. Anything to take the Lakers out of their game plan and force them to adjust again. We lost 91–84, and LA was back in control.

  Even so, I didn’t get down on myself. You can’t allow the lows to be too low or the highs too high in this game or,
pardon the pun, you’ll become a basket case.

  Anyway, we bounced back to take Game 4, 96–89, Big Baby with 18 points off the bench, and went on to capture Game 5, 92–86, despite 38 from Kobe.

  Returning to Los Angeles, I felt very good about our chances of winning Game 6, and another championship.

  Until I saw Paul.

  During our walk-through at the hotel, he was leaning against the wall and was not as dialed in as he should have been. I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

  “Paul, pay attention,” Doc said. “I need you here.”

  That night, Paul scored 13 points and turned the ball over five times. To be fair, none of us were as dialed in as we should have been. The result: Lakers 89, Celtics 67. There was more sobering news. Perk injured his knee in the first quarter and didn’t return. He would be declared out for Game 7.

  So here we were, right where we were destined to be. One game to decide it all.

  In the hours leading up to the game, I prepared like I always did. I got my shots up, and the proper rest, and tuned out any distractions. Doc, for a change, didn’t say anything to motivate us, and he shouldn’t have had to. If you’re not motivated for the most important game of the series—of the season—well, that’s on you.

  We got off to a strong start, leading 23–14 after the first quarter. The lead was six at halftime. Then, beginning the third quarter, we went on a 9–2 run to go ahead 49–36. In a low-scoring game such as this, each possession a struggle, 13 points was a big advantage.

  By the end of the quarter, however, it was only four. Kobe wasn’t having one of his better nights—he would end up six for 24—but Ron Artest, the Lakers’ small forward, was all over the place, scoring baskets, making steals, firing up his teammates and the fans.

  With six and a half minutes to go, I hit two free throws to put us on top, 64–61. It would be our last lead of the night.