BOSTON — The Hall of Famer goes largely unnoticed at first in the basement gym.
With a winter hat on, Ray Allen is somewhat disguised, though he still looks trim enough to glide onto the court and rise for his patented jump shot. For a second, while standing near the sideline, he appears ready to let one fly. When a ball rolls over to him, he bends his legs and cocks back his wrist, as if preparing to launch a 3-pointer. It’s just a pump fake, though. With a laugh, he tosses the ball back onto the court, where Emerson College players are warming up for their game against visiting Western Connecticut State.
In Boston, Allen is an icon, though not everyone has forgiven him for leaving the Celtics as a free agent in 2012. But on this mid-November Friday night, he is first and foremost a father, rooting for his son. Before returning to pregame preparation, Walter Ray Allen III — known, like his father, as Ray — walks over to wrap his dad in a hug.
It’s mostly a coincidence that the younger Allen, a junior guard at Emerson, landed at a college in downtown Boston, across the street from Boston Common. Though he plays his home games in the shadow of TD Garden, one mile from the Celtics’ arena, his Division III program is a far cry from the big leagues, illustrated by the attendance of 293 for the 71-67 win against Western Connecticut. He is forging his own basketball journey, one he calls an “unorthodox path.” After playing for his father at Gulliver Prep, a high school in Pinecrest, Fla., he started his college career as a preferred walk-on at Rhode Island before transferring to Emerson before the start of his sophomore season.
For a basketball player in New England, carrying the name Ray Allen comes with pressure and lofty expectations. Those around the younger Allen marvel at how he handles the weight of it all.
He blossomed late, as he puts it, after not falling in love with basketball until late in his childhood. Now, after finding a spark for the sport, he intends to see where it takes him.
“The game just gives so much to people like my dad and me, and people all over the world,” said Allen, “that I just have to play it out, honestly.”
Retired Celtics legend Ray Allen and his son Ray Allen III sit courtside at a game at TD Garden. (Brian Babineau / NBAE via Getty Images)
Introductions aren’t always simple for a college student named Ray Allen.
Is that your name? Really? So your name’s Ray Allen? And you live in Boston?
“Yes,” Allen will say. “And that’s my dad.”
It’s a good conversation starter. But with such a recognizable name, Allen can’t find much anonymity on the court.
“Everyone (wants) to go at him like, ‘I can put that notch in my belt because I took down Ray Allen’s kid,’” Emerson coach Bill Curley said. “The fact that he’s stuck with this and is still competing, it says a lot about how strong and tough he is. A lot of other kids would just (decide), ‘I’m going to go do something else.’”
Allen has stayed with it. And though he isn’t the shooter his father is (“nobody is,” he says), teammate Brendan Taylor said Allen is “one of our best defenders.”
Heading into Saturday’s regular season finale at Springfield College, Allen is averaged 1.6 points over 7.5 minutes per game for the 9-15 Lions.
“He’s out there competing and working on getting better,” Curley said. “His path isn’t going to be to the NBA, probably, or the pros, but he’s enjoying the competition and learning how to work with the team and then just going through it all. … He’s getting everybody’s best because they want to show him up. They either want to impress his dad (in the crowd), or they want to (prove) like, ‘Oh, you ain’t anything; I’m going to come at you.’ That’s where he has that quiet fire.
“I don’t think people realize how difficult that is, having that target on, and it’s not fair because he’s not his dad. He’s not as big. He is probably every bit as athletic, but it’s different when you’re not 6-5.”
Curley first developed an appreciation for the younger Allen’s game after seeing him compete as a high schooler in a camp at Yale. At recruiting events, Curley said, most players are focused on themselves. They shoot the ball every time they touch it. In that type of environment — Curley calls it a “free-for-all” — Allen’s hustle stood out.
The Emerson roster lists Allen as 6-1. He wasn’t that tall back then.
“He was just this little guy,” Curley said. “He went in, got blocked and (afterward) turned on the afterburners and beat the kid, the outlet to the wing, and chased it down. Most kids these days, they put their head down, clap and then trot back (on defense). But he was on a mission to get back. … He definitely caught my eye there, and we kind of followed him.”
Curley, who starred at Boston College before a seven-year NBA career, had known Allen’s father for years, dating to their time as opponents in the Big East and again in the pros. When Curley wanted to recruit the younger Allen, the connection helped. Allen didn’t choose Emerson directly out of high school, but when he opted to enter the transfer portal after one year at Rhode Island, hoping to find a program where he could play, his father remembered Curley’s interest.
At Emerson, the coach has aimed to pull out the ferocity within Allen.
“He’s quiet, but his eyes and ears, he’s watching everything,” Curley said. “You kind of watch him, and I think it’s probably tough for him because everyone’s comparing him to his dad. He’s not his dad, obviously, so he’s just kind of reserved like that. But he’s got a huge engine inside of him, a huge motor when he turns it on. … We’re just trying to unleash the beast that he has in there.”
The elder Allen had the same goal when coaching his son at Gulliver Prep.
Ray Allen, fourth from right, holds his son, Ray Allen III, after winning an NBA championship with the Boston Celtics in 2008. (Matthew West / MediaNews Group / Boston Herald via Getty Images)
Despite his own Hall of Fame career, the elder Ray Allen never wanted to push basketball on his sons.
“That has never been my mission,” he said. “All my dreams have already come true.”
Instead, he wants to help his children achieve their dreams. That was why early in the younger Allen’s high school tenure, his father asked him what he wanted from the game. Before then, the younger Allen hadn’t expressed much interest in maximizing his basketball talent. He said he didn’t start pushing himself until he was in the eighth grade and his younger brother, Walker, eclipsed him as a basketball player.
Ray III calls Walker, who now plays at The Hotchkiss School, “a basketball savant.”
“And not just because he’s my brother,” he said. “He was a sixth-grader beating on me. I’m bigger than him, but he has a flashier game. So, I’m like, ‘I’ve got to get all that.’”
It also motivated the younger Allen to see friends, including Bronny James and Jett Howard, emerging as top prospects. When discussing his basketball goals, the elder Allen said his son shared he wanted to reach the NBA.
“I’ll be with you every step of the way to help you realize your goals and dreams,” his father told him, “But it doesn’t always come in roses and bouquets. … You get screamed at. You have to get out of bed at times when you don’t want to get out of bed. You have to work out when everybody else is going in another direction. You’ve got to get your work in.”
That message helped explain the elder Allen’s approach to his time as his son’s coach. He sought to challenge his players. He wanted them to think in the context of putting together a puzzle each day. Prioritizing critical thinking skills, he aimed to create confusion so they could work their way out of it. If he didn’t put players through the gauntlet at practice, he believed he was doing them a disservice.
“That was the thing that I tried to do: get them to experience everything in practice under fatigue,” he said. “And then, when they get in the game, they’re familiar with it. That’s the same stuff that I did in my own career.”
Among other lessons, the Hall of Famer regularly preached that his players should communicate like his former teammate Kevin Garnett. The 21-year-old said that was the most important basketball advice he received from his father.
“The kids that communicate, they’re the ones that look different,” the elder Allen said. “When you go to AAU games and you see kids actually talking, they like each other, they understand the game, they know how to be communicative. That was always my message to the teams I coached. I would tell them about Kevin. When I was in a game, I always knew where he was, because it was like sonar; I could hear his voice all the time.”
Of course, the elder Allen’s shooting advice was also useful. Few know more about a jump shot than he does. Even when watching the live stream broadcasts of Emerson’s games, he notices every detail. He will tell his son that he didn’t jump enough on his shot, or that he didn’t have the ball on his fingertips, or that he didn’t take a breath while at the free-throw line.
“I’m like, you can see if I didn’t take a breath or not?” Allen said. “He’s like, yeah, I can see everything.”
Everything.
During college games, the 10-time NBA All-Star will quickly recognize when his son has reverted to bad shooting habits. With limited playing time, he does not always get many 3-point attempts. His father tells him he needs to be consistent with the chances he does receive to earn more opportunities.
The elder Allen believes some players miss shots in games because they don’t work hard enough in drills and in practices to prepare their bodies for the necessary intensity. He has told his sons that if they work hard enough on the practice court, they won’t feel tired during games.
The Emerson junior learned quickly that he should not doubt his father’s advice. Though playing for a parent can present difficulties, he said it was easy for him.
“Because,” said Allen, “I wanted to improve and be — what’s the word? — great like him.”
The elder Ray Allen has used Stetson Bennett’s story as an example for his sons.
Before becoming a Georgia football legend, Bennett first attended the school as a walk-on quarterback. He didn’t receive a chance to play immediately, redshirted as a freshman and transferred to Jones College, a junior college in Mississippi. One year later, Georgia coach Kirby Smart called Bennett and offered him a scholarship to return to Georgia.
While fighting off doubters the whole time, Bennett returned to the school, earned the starting job, and capped his college career by winning two straight national championships.
“Sometimes the design is for you to have to face adversity,” Allen said, “to kind of find out what you’re actually made for or made of.”
That story is about sports, but it can apply to anything else.
“I tell my son, this mission that you’re on, wherever it takes you, it’s not about sports; it’s about your ability to learn something, use the struggles that you’re going through and apply your ability to figure out how to overcome them and build yourself back stronger so you can be a difference maker,” he said. “Every step of the way, that’s always going to be the case.”
No matter what happens on the basketball court, Allen will be proud of his son, whom he calls “an exceptional young man.” Objectively, young Ray has already accomplished more in basketball than many ever will. About five years after becoming serious about the game, he attracted enough interest to play for a Division I university. When he transferred, he found another program that wanted him in Emerson.
Outside of basketball, young Ray has plenty of other interests. He plays the piano. He surfs (even in the New England winter). He has completed an internship at Publicis Groupe, a major New York City advertising agency. He has embraced various aspects of life after being a homebody when he was younger.
“He has an insatiable desire and quest to learn and to grow and to get better,” said the elder Allen. “A lot of his friends stay kind of cemented in one place, and he wants to go and wants to grow. That to me is what I’m probably most proud of, because he has a good heart and he wants to learn. … He’s not afraid of the world.”
The younger Allen said he is fiery like his mother. He also aims to stay poised like his father, whose discipline stemmed from military upbringing.
“He’s able to command and control a room,” the younger Allen said. “He has this, my mom says, ‘animal magnetism.’ He is just able to bring people together and light up the room. And I try and do that. … I just try to be a great person like he is.”
After college, Allen hasn’t ruled out a basketball career. If an NBA franchise lands in Seattle, he said he would love to work for the team. Though he was young when his father played for the SuperSonics, the city gives him a sense of nostalgia.
“I know basketball so much,” he said, “where it’s like I could really help a team and just give back to the game.”
Allen is at the right school for an NBA front office career. Oklahoma City Thunder executive vice president and general manager Sam Presti is said to have taken six charges in a single game as an Emerson guard. While rising to the top of the NBA world, Presti helped put other Emerson graduates in a position to climb with him — and, in doing so, helped establish the most unlikely front office bloodline from the small liberal arts college. Will Dawkins, the Washington Wizards general manager, and Rob Hennigan, the former Orlando Magic GM who is now an assistant GM for the Thunder, each scored more than 1,000 points as Emerson basketball players.
It was Presti who traded Allen to the Celtics in 2007, sending him to Boston at the right time in his career. With the Celtics, he broke the all-time made 3-pointers record, earned three of his 10 All-Star berths and captured his first championship. Alongside Garnett, Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo, Allen restored pride to a franchise that had lost its way for nearly two decades before the big three united.
On the court, young Ray understands some people will always compare him to his father. Somebody running from those comparisons would have likely attended college anywhere other than Boston. He said he doesn’t care about the naysayers or haters, though having the name Ray Allen isn’t always easy.
The hardest part?
“Just what people expected from me, honestly,” he said. “Obviously, we’re different people, but you can appreciate both of us at the same time.”