Did Ray Allen hit the biggest shot ever in the 2013 Finals? What was his biggest contribution to the game?
Our Insiders debate and discuss the now-retired NBA great.
1. Where does Ray Allen belong in the "greatest shooter ever" conversation?
Tom Haberstroh, ESPN Insider: Second all-time. I'd place him behind Stephen Curry and right there with Steve Nash and Reggie Miller. I mean, Allen has made 400 more 3-pointers than anybody in NBA history. He could hit it off the dribble, off the pass or off-balance. He got so high off the ground on his shot you could drive a car underneath him.
Kevin Arnovitz, ESPN.com: We're looking for both volume and accuracy. Allen dominates the first, eclipsing Reggie Miller by more than 400 successful 3-point attempts. He finished his career as a 40.0 percent 3-point shooter, which is incredibly good, if not elite, among the best shotmakers. Steph Curry will probably finish his career above Allen on both lists and claim the mantle, but for a few more seasons, Allen maintains the title.
Amin Elhassan, ESPN Insider: For me he's right in the mix in that tier below Curry, consisting of some combination of Allen, Reggie Miller, Allan Houston, Jerry West and Steve Nash. I feel like Allen gets a special nod for his form over most every comparable shooter, other than maybe Houston. In other words, it's not just the efficiency in every phase of shooting that he excelled at, but his very technique was picture perfect, a textbook example of what a jumper should look like.
David Thorpe, ESPN Insider: I'll let the stats guys rank him. I think he is among the elite few, because he combined great shooting results with a quick release, good size and the ability to blow by a defender for an easy bucket. That made him extremely difficult to defend.
Put it like this: He might not win every game of "H-O-R-S-E" against the other top six or seven shooters in league history, but he'd probably win every game of one-on-one. He was far more than just a great shooter.
Kevin Pelton, ESPN Insider: I'd probably say third behind Steph Curry and Kyle Korver. Korver's actually slightly more prolific than Allen on a per-minute basis while shooting a higher percentage beyond the arc, so I think he has moved past Allen historically despite far fewer total 3-pointers.
2. When he goes into the Hall of Fame, with which team should Allen be most identified?
Elhassan: Milwaukee Bucks Ray Allen is a joy I fear many an NBA fan under age 30 neither knows nor appreciates. Many remember Allen as a guy who came off screens and spotted up in Boston and Miami, but Milwaukee Ray Allen was a dynamic, well-rounded player and a tremendously graceful athlete. He could put the ball on the floor and create for others as well as hit his signature jump shot.
Pelton: As much as my heart says the Sonics, the debate is probably between the Bucks, with whom Allen played the longest, and the Celtics, given his postseason success in Boston. Of those two choices, I'd probably go with the Celtics. Despite being past his prime, Allen was nearly as effective in Boston as he was in Milwaukee, especially because he improved dramatically on defense. Allen also provided enough value for the Celtics in the playoffs to tip the scales.
Thorpe: I have no opinion other than to say, "Ray, you choose." He created some indelible memories at every stop along the way, to be sure, and no matter what he chooses, the other fan bases will still remember him with great fondness. He was a very easy guy to root for and a hard guy to hate if you were an opposing team or fan.
Haberstroh: My man Kevin Pelton is gonna kill me for not picking his Sonics here, but I'm going with the Celtics. That's where history was made. He played more playoff games in Boston than he did in his three other stops combined. More politically, that's where he caused a seismic shift in the NBA by teaming up with Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce en route to his first championship.
As much as I want to suggest the Heat here because of the The Shot, his overall postseason track record in Miami was mixed. He didn't even score in the clinching Game 7 in 2013, for instance. Not that he needed to in order to earn South Florida immortality.
Arnovitz: Boston Celtics. He was a wunderkind in Milwaukee, a one-way player in Seattle and a grizzled role player, albeit one who hit a legendary shot, in Miami. In Boston, he was one of the Big 3, a group that revitalized a sleeping giant of a franchise. Though his best season came in Milwaukee at age 25, his most important ones were in Boston.
3. Accurate or Inaccurate: Ray Allen made the biggest shot in NBA history.
Elhassan: Inaccurate. It's certainly one of the more memorable shots, though I can't put it in unequivocally over Michael Jordan's famous 1998 shot in Utah, Robert Horry's 3 vs. Detroit in 2005 or Kyrie Irving's Game 7 dagger in 2016. I guess what I'm saying is, this isn't really a category where you can call anything definitively the biggest in NBA history.
Haberstroh: Accurate. According to Inpredictable.com models, the Heat had just a 6.1 percent chance of winning that game after Bosh collected the offensive rebound. It wasn't a game-winner, but it immediately swung the championship odds into a coin flip.
But let's strip the numbers out of it for a second and marvel at the freakish court awareness and surgical footwork required to knock down that shot. This wasn't a one-on-one controlled situation like Michael Jordan against Utah. This was chaos. And another thing: If he doesn't hit the shot, LeBron's turnover in the final minute would carry much more weight in the King's story arc.
Arnovitz: Accurate. There are good cases to be made for MJ's shot in '98, John Paxson's 3-pointer with four seconds remaining in Game 6 of the '93 Finals, and Magic's running hook in '87, but Allen's shot didn't just win a game, it literally reversed a series. Jordan's will probably endure as the more iconic shot, but Allen's was the most impactful.
Pelton: Accurate. The Spurs came closer to winning a championship without doing so than anyone else in NBA history, and Allen's 3-pointer is the single biggest reason why.
Thorpe: Inaccurate, though I'm not sure any one man can make that claim. In terms of degree of difficulty, I'd give the edge to Magic's skyhook to win Game 4 in Boston in '87, especially considering who was defending him and where the game was played.
I've always thought the biggest pressure shots in basketball history were the two free throws Doug Collins made to "beat" the Soviet Union in 1972, before they made that miraculous game winner in the final seconds. Allen did what Allen did often -- make a clutch shot in the blink of an eye.
4. What is a unique aspect of Allen's career, or a unique contribution to the game?
Arnovitz: I like to ask NBA players about their game-day routines, and it's remarkable how often Allen's name comes up as the gold standard -- from young guys, old guys, shooters, of course, but also big men who take their floor work seriously. Allen didn't invent the present-day warmup routine, but in the eyes of those who play the game at the highest level, he perfected it.
Thorpe: I think Allen helped bring some science into the game. Yes, he was an enormously talented athlete with exquisite skill, but he worked diligently on refining that skill and for spending hours upon hours in the gym doing just that. Kobe Bryant was a gym rat, too, but Ray made it cool to be that special of a talent yet still study and work at the technical aspects of the skill game. He was by far the most dynamic athlete of the top shooters in league history. That skill didn't come by accident.
Elhassan: This is going to sound strange, but whenever I hear "juvenile diabetes," I always think of Ray Allen and his family in the ad campaigns they did promoting awareness of the disease. I might not have ever thought of juvenile diabetes if it weren't for the Allen family.
Pelton: His legendary routine and preparation for each game. Don't mistake Allen's beautiful jumper as a natural gift or the result of genetics. It was well-honed in the gymnasium, something that remained as true when Allen was an NBA All-Star as when he was trying to get to the league. There have been, and will continue to be, plenty of hard-working NBA stars. However, none of them will likely be quite so tied to a specific routine.
Haberstroh: Erik Spoelstra always remarked about how dynamic Allen was with the ball. He was Steph before Steph, pulling up off the dribble when most guys needed to set up on the catch. Allen wasn't just a shooting specialist as were some other snipers such as Steve Kerr or Dell Curry.
To put it in perspective, we don't have Reggie Miller's assisted numbers for his whole career, but in the five seasons we do have on Basketball-Reference.com, he was assisted on 90.5 percent of his 3-pointers. When Allen led the league in 3-pointers in 2002-03, he was assisted on 79.6 percent of his treys. You don't score 30 on a nightly basis by being a shooting specialist.
5. What is your favorite memory or story about Ray Allen?
Haberstroh: In 2010-11, I noticed a chess match between Dwyane Wade and Allen, who was still with the Celtics at the time. Wade just could not score against the Celtics. And despite all the stories about Kevin Garnett's and Kendrick Perkins' defense, Wade's struggles had nothing to do with the Celtics' defense. The struggles were because of Ray Allen's jumper. Yes, his jumper.
Every time Wade attacked the basket, he tended to sell the contact by falling. Doc Rivers and Allen had a plan: Every time Wade drove, Allen would leak out in transition and hit a jumper on the run while Wade was complaining to refs. This happened all the time.
So what did the Heat do? They told Wade to stop driving because of Allen's jump shot. Allen's shooting skill was so powerful, it turned Wade's greatest offensive strength into a glaring weakness. Think about that. But Wade had a pretty good counter, recruiting him to Miami and helping Ray win another title. I'd say it worked out.
Elhassan: I've got two. In Milwaukee, he had a buzzer-beating, game-tying dunk on Tracy McGrady in the playoffs out of a deadball ATO situation, an excellent display of his ability to create off the dribble and finish above the rim.
And from his college days, let's not forget his game-winning shot for UConn versus Georgetown in the Big East tournament, which probably was his most memorable career moment before the 2013 game winner versus San Antonio.
Arnovitz: As a fellow member of the OCD club, I love the morsels in this Jackie MacMullan classic from 2008 that documents Allen's dedication to routine. An NBA charter plane has dozens of seats, but Allen would tell teammates they were sitting in the wrong seat if it upset his equilibrium. He couldn't abide by UConn roommate Travis Knight squeezing toothpaste from the middle of the tube.
On a separate note, Allen has repeatedly visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington and makes an effort to bring a new companion each time he returns.
Thorpe: This one is easy. In 1995, Lon Kruger was the head coach for Team USA's World University Games entry that easily won gold in Japan late in the summer. It was probably the best team ever fielded for the event, and I was invited to watch some of their practices because a former high school player of mine was named as an alternate and practiced with the team every day.
Allen was a very famous player, as was the team's point guard, Allen Iverson. I had coached some very high-level players in high school to that point, but I'd never seen someone as explosively quick and competitive as Iverson in person, nor anyone as athletic yet smooth with the ball as Ray.
The practices were amazing, with future NBA draft picks at every position. Ray had a grace about him that I have always remembered and admired. He was the second-leading scorer on that team, behind Iverson, and in the scrimmages I watched he was their third-best defender behind Iverson and their starting center, Tim Duncan.
Pelton: It probably should be when Allen set what was then the single-season record for 3-pointers against the Denver Nuggets, salvaging a lost Sonics season. Or his 3-pointer to beat the Phoenix Suns 152-149 in double-OT the same night Kobe Bryant went for 81 points. Or a big game in Sacramento during the 2005 playoffs.
Having covered Allen throughout his time in Seattle, however, the lingering memory will always be him and Rashard Lewis chatting with media in the locker room before games. Allen once referred to himself as "7-11," because he was always open to the media, and it was true. Those pregame experiences made going to work fun on a nightly basis.