If anything this proves to me that Ray Allen's departure was fueled by a bitterness more then anything, which is exactly what it seemed like when it happened.
He's not really changing the story or making himself look any better in my opinion. This really just cements what many of us knew. He was mad at Danny trading him, mad about AB taking his minutes.
These things are basketball related. But Ray admits he took them personally.
Ray says we were going in another direction. That's just wrong, the Celts weren't going to blow it up and they didn't. After taking the Heat to 7, Ainge was creating a team that would compete for 2 more years if it stayed healthy and wanted Ray Allen to be our 6th man off the bench and he was going to get paid handsomely for it. We wanted Ray Allen in the exact same capacity the Heat wanted him, and we offered him more money. Any professional player would have taken more money to rejoin his team mates, but instead Ray admits he was upset about being benched (which makes no sense since he was going be a bench player in Miami)
Instead of looking at himself and blaming his own declining performance for being benched, he blamed Rondo, he blamed Doc. Ray didn't want another chance at the Heat in game 7, he wanted to just join them, that's easier.
Ray Allen is trying to make this a pity party for him when the reality is the things he claims he had to deal with are things that every single NBA player has to deal with, the majority of them do not put up such a fuss about it and cause them to just blame their team mates and coach and join the rival team for pittance.
Only the team didn't compete for two years. It tried one year and then dealt Garnett, Pierce, and Terry. If Ainge had promised he wouldn't blow it up those two seasons and had built enough goodwill with Ray for there to be a trust, Ray may well have signed. But of course there was no trust at that point and Ainge would never give a guarantee like that.
Ainge's most repeated quote is still the one he gave about the 80s Celtics team waiting too long to deal its stars. He's clearly always been in the "best for the organization" camp, not the "die with your aging star slowly until he retires" camp (like the Lakers). Evidently, ownership agrees or they would have put the kibosh on the Pierce deal.
I'm not saying either way is right or wrong from a "loyalty" or moral standpoint, just that Ray correctly predicted that Ainge and the franchise would have no compunction blowing it up during the course of his prospective deal.
Some people have mentioned a no-trade clause as somehow being protection, but that only protects you if you WANT to stay on a rebuilding team. You've got factors like trade rules requiring matching deals and the organization dealing you wanting the best possible return really limiting your destination options.
Not to mention, in a trade the team you're going to has to give up assets to obtain you. The Heat didn't need to give the Celtics anything to get Ray. Meanwhile, Brooklyn's chances of making a deal are severely limited due to the Celtics owning all their picks and taking one of their big expiring contracts. Pierce and Garnett are stuck.
Ray considered all this and thought, if this season and next there's really not going to be any situation that could possibly be better than Miami, why wouldn't I go there? Eliminate the rivalry thing that fans think players should care about but they actually don't and the call was a no-brainer.
In regards to whether as a friend to Pierce and Garnett he shouldn't have made that decision, as I said before we don't know any of these people personally so I hesitate to speculate too far. My guess is that they'll all make up sometime after retirement.
Topic: DA already thought of blowing the team up in the '11 summer, per R. Allen (Read 19161 times)