by Ray Allen
We were all pretty friendly with each other, until the night, strangely enough, we won the gold medal. Afterward, we were eager to celebrate, A.I. more than anyone.
“We leave in the morning,” Iverson told the rest of us, “so no one had better go to sleep or else they’re going to get pranked. No one.”
So who passes out as soon as he gets back to the dorm? You guessed it.
I suggested that we put peanut butter and shampoo all over Iverson’s hands and face. There was no shortage of volunteers.
Except Iverson ruined our plan by waking up before we were finished, and he wanted revenge. Which he got on everyone else, until it came time to go after me. Soon, he and I were wrestling on the floor, punches being exchanged. Believe it or not, he was seriously trying to hurt me.
Before I knew it, he grabbed a fire extinguisher and swung it at me. I ducked just in time. Muhammad Ali would have been proud.
“I’m going to get you back,” Iverson vowed.
“Dude,” I said, “it was just a game.” Somehow I didn’t think I got through to him.
He and I would have many battles over the years—on the court.
Some people may have gotten the idea that we hated each other; that’s how intense those battles were. Nonsense. He wanted to beat me, and I wanted to beat him, and that’s how it should be.
My junior year began the same way as the previous two years. With us as hot as any team in the nation.
After falling in our second game to number 10 Iowa, 101–95, in OT, we beat number 23 Indiana by 34 points and Northeastern by 47. By mid-February, we stood at 24-1, including 14-0 in the conference.
Then, at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland, came the duel between number 3 UConn and number 11 Georgetown—and yours truly and Allen Iverson.
The Hoyas, to be sure, were far from a one-man team, as were we, and their coach was one of the best, John Thompson. Nearly seven feet tall, he intimidated the hell out of you, and his players took on his personality, especially on the defensive end, hounding you from one end of the court to the other. Like Coach Calhoun, he would have made a tremendous general. Coach Thompson got the better of us on that occasion: Georgetown 77, Connecticut 65. It was their press that won it for them, forcing us to commit 20 turnovers. On the offensive side, it was all Iverson: 26 points and six assists. I hit just five of 18, tying a season-low with 13 points.
Less than a month later, we faced Georgetown again, in the Big East tournament final at the Garden. The winner, in addition to bragging rights, would get a boost going into the Big Dance, set to begin a few days later. We played better in that game and trailed by only four points at the half. Even so, with four and a half minutes to go, the Hoyas were up by 11. We needed a spark, and fast.
And we got one, from Kirk King. Kirk made two baskets and two free throws to cut the deficit to five. Several possessions later, he scored on an emphatic dunk to slice it to one. When the Hoyas went to the free-throw line and missed the front end of a one-and-one, we had the ball with 44 seconds left.
Coach Calhoun called time. In the huddle, he didn’t waver for a second. “I’m going to Ray,” he said.
My first thought: He believes in me. He believed in me even though other guys, like Kirk, and Ricky Moore, our freshman guard, were having much better games. I was four of 19, having missed my last 14 in a row. Nobody would have blamed him if he were to go with someone who had a hot hand.
“Ray, you’ll come off the screen, and then you’ll have the whole side to operate,” Coach said.
Once he showed confidence in me, no way was I going to let him, and the team, down.
With 18 seconds left, I got the ball from Ricky, turned to the right, and drove in the direction of the basket. Iverson bumped me, while Jerome Williams, the Georgetown forward, edged over to help. I thought for a split-second about getting it to Rudy Johnson, my teammate, who was open in the corner, but he pulled his hands back.
Now I was in trouble—in the air and off-balance. So, with no other option, I threw it up in the vicinity of the hoop, and the ball bounced off the rim, then the backboard, and in!
Connecticut 75, Georgetown 74.
It wasn’t over yet. There were 14 seconds to go, an eternity for Allen Iverson. Everybody remembers his rant about practice but I can’t think of a player who was more fearless. Only six feet tall, at most, he had a lot to prove, and, year after year, he did.
Iverson missed that time, thank goodness, a fadeaway behind the free-throw line. Williams grabbed the rebound and had a great chance from just a few feet away. But he missed, as well.
Then it was over. In those final four and a half minutes, we outscored the Hoyas, 12–0. We were the Big East champs. The title we craved most was next, and as the number 1 seed in the Southeast Regional in Indianapolis, we couldn’t have felt more confident.
You wouldn’t know it by how we played in the first two rounds. Yes, we got past Colgate and Eastern Michigan to reach the Sweet Sixteen for the third year in a row, but if we didn’t pick up our game, we would come up short once again.
From Indianapolis, we went, ironically, to Lexington.
Once upon a time it looked like I might play in a lot of big games at Rupp Arena. Now, if we could win the next two, Rupp would forever be the place where I booked my ticket to the Final Four.
First, we had to get by the number 5 seed, the Mississippi State Bulldogs, which was no given. This was the team that had stunned Kentucky a few weeks before in the SEC tournament championship game. They had four players averaging double figures, including Erick Dampier, their six-foot-eleven center, who would spend 16 years in the NBA.
As it turned out, their guard, Darryl Wilson, was the one who killed us. He hit five three-pointers in a row, seven altogether, scoring 27 points in a 60–55 win. I killed us as well, making only nine of 25, the most crucial miss with 12 seconds to go, a three that would have tied the game. I also missed both of my free throws.
Like the loss to Florida two years earlier, this one hurt. It was a game we should have won, though I have often asked myself: Did we want to win? Nonsense, you say. Of course you wanted to win. Maybe, but a part of us wanted to go home, which is what we should have done between the games in Indianapolis and Lexington. Coach was looking to avoid any distractions, though, and that’s why we stayed away.
I can see his point, but sometimes you need a pat on the back, and we would have gotten that on campus. What does this have to do with the way we played? Impossible to say, but I can tell you that, after the game, the guys were as happy to go to return to Storrs as they would have been to remain on the road for another couple of days, and you can’t split your focus if you hope to win a championship.
In any case, what the future would hold was not on my mind as I got off the court at Rupp. Clearly, however, it was on the mind of Stephon Marbury, whose Georgia Tech team was about to take on Cincinnati in the next game.
“See you in the draft,” Stephon told me.
Meanwhile, I went to class like everybody else. I was a student-athlete, not an athlete-student. At least, that was the plan. Every time I showed up, though, the other students gave me funny looks.
“Why are you here?” they asked.
Heck, even the professors were puzzled. A week or so later, it finally hit me: Why am I here? By this point, all anybody wanted to know was if I was going to turn pro or come back for my senior year. It reminded me of high school, when everyone kept asking where I was going to college.
To many, there was no doubt. Ray, you are the Big East Player of the Year. You’re one of the best guards in the country. You will be a top-five pick in the draft. You’ll be set for life. How can you not go?
Everything they said was true. But first, I wanted to see if I could make the case to stay.
One person who didn’t hesitate to make it was Jim Calhoun.
“You don’t want to go yet,” Coach told me. “You’ll be with a lot of grown men, hanging out, doing God knows wh
at. Plus, you could certainly use another year in college to get better.”
I looked up to Coach Calhoun and appreciated what he was saying. Whenever I strayed, even a little, from doing what I needed to improve my game (“Did you make 100 percent of your shots today?”), he was there to set me straight. None of what happened later could have happened without him. Plus, I didn’t doubt for a moment he was telling me the truth. You can always get better.
On the other hand, some members of my family were excited about the prospects of me turning pro, though Mom said she would be pleased with whatever I decided. God bless her.
The days flew by. At times, I felt I was close to announcing my decision. Others, I wasn’t so sure. Then came the day that made it clearer to me than ever, and from a most unlikely source. I was walking on campus when I bumped into my former anthropology professor, Mr. Magubane. An expert on the draft he was not.
“Mr. Allen, what are you doing with your future?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I told him.
“Mr. Allen, look around you,” he went on. “This university has been here since the 1800s. And it will be here long after you’re gone.”
That’s all he said, but it was enough. For the longest time, I worried people might think poorly of me if I chose making money over getting my degree, but he made me see that I could earn a degree anytime. Besides, there has always been a stigma attached to the black athlete who leaves college early. Name one white athlete who was criticized for taking the money.
In the end, there was no case I could make to stay. I could only make the case to go.
Leaving Connecticut was difficult. I had shown up at the airport in Hartford three years earlier with a trash bag full of clothes, $200 in my pocket, and no guarantees. Now, after the work I put in and the lessons I learned from Coach Calhoun and his staff, I was going out into the world with a chance to live my dream. But it was more than that. They taught me to be a man, not just a basketball player. For that, I will be forever grateful.
The bonds I created with my teammates were the strongest of my life, and still are. We came from different parts of the country, and although we’d reached a certain level of success before we got there, there was still a lot to learn. The learning didn’t come easy, and for each of us, there were times we didn’t think it would ever come. In those times, we were there for one another. Always.
Sure, I wished we had played in a Final Four. We certainly had our chances. If Donyell had made one of the free throws against Florida. If UCLA hadn’t been on a roll. If I had hit the three against Mississippi State. Coach used to tell us you have to be lucky to get there. We weren’t. Yet, even if I’d been in a Final Four with Kentucky or another school with a rich tradition, I wouldn’t have the satisfaction I do today from playing for UConn. I helped build something special.
In the spring of 1999, I was in the stands at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, when the Huskies captured the first of their four national championships, beating Duke, 77–74. I felt a part of that triumph belonged to me and everyone who had played at the University of Connecticut.
The decision to go to UConn and, three years later, to leave UConn was mine and mine alone. However, by putting my name in the 1996 NBA Draft, I’d be back where I was as a kid, going where someone told me to go.
Barring a trade, it would be one of four cities: Philadelphia, Toronto, Vancouver, or Milwaukee, the teams with the first four selections. No one figured I would last any longer.
In the days leading up to the big day, June 26, I visited each place so that the teams could put me through a workout. It was one thing to see a player on film, another to see him in the flesh. The importance of making the right decision can’t be overstated. The wrong one can set a franchise back years and cost a general manager his job.
Two visits stood out: Toronto, for what did not happen, and Milwaukee, for what did.
In Toronto, I met with the legendary Pistons guard Isiah Thomas, a part owner and executive with the Raptors.
“I want to see you run from here to there,” Isiah said, pointing to a spot on the court about 30 yards away. Whatever you say, Mr. Thomas.
Once I got there, I awaited further instructions. They never came.
“I don’t need you to do anything else,” he said. “I know what you can do.”
Well, that certainly didn’t make me believe I’d end up in Toronto. If you’re going to invest a lot of money into your so-called player of the future, you better see every part of his skill set. The NBA doesn’t give you do-overs.
If you think the Toronto “workout” was out of the ordinary, wait till you hear what took place in Milwaukee.
Shortly after I got to the practice facility, Mike Dunleavy, the team’s GM, asked me to play a game of one-on-one against Chris Robinson, a guard from Western Kentucky, who the Bucks were thinking about picking in the second round.
No problem. While playing one-on-one is hardly the fairest test of an individual’s value in a team game, I figured Dunleavy might learn a thing or two about me he would not spot in other drills. Chris had a flight to catch, so I knew we wouldn’t play for long. We went at each other pretty hard.
Once Chris took off, I figured Dunleavy would put me through a more conventional workout.
Guess again.
“Let’s play, you and I,” he said.
You and I? Was he out of his mind? Mike Dunleavy had been a decent player in his day, except his day was long gone; he was 42. What he could possibly gain from playing someone half his age, I didn’t have a clue.
Whatever he was thinking, I couldn’t say no, could I? And no, I don’t remember the score, if there was one.
Afterward, I met with Senator Herb Kohl, who owned the team. The senator and I hit it off, but as I left town, I was still trying to figure out what Dunleavy had been up to.
In any case, that was it for my visits. Minnesota, picking fifth, asked me at the last minute to come in for a workout, but I declined. My family was already in New York for activities related to the draft, which was to take place in New Jersey. Besides, the Timberwolves had a talented young shooting guard, J. R. Rider. They didn’t need me.
One team that did was the Boston Celtics, at number 6. I was in my hotel room, just hours before the draft, when a call came from Red Auerbach, the president of the Celtics. Red was the Celtics, dating back to the early 1950s, before they started winning championships, eight in a row at one point. He said they would take me if I was still on the board. I was blown away.
Whatever my fate might be, I didn’t have to wait long. I took a seat in the green room at the Continental Airlines Arena with the others whose lives were about to change forever.
Around 7:30 PM, before a national audience on TNT, Commissioner Stern walked to the podium and began to recite the names:
Allen Iverson to the Sixers at number 1. No surprise there. You want to get your fan base excited, you take the most exciting young player in the game.
Marcus Camby, a center from the University of Massachusetts, to Toronto at number 2. No surprise there either. The Raptors needed a big. I wondered what kind of workout Isiah put him through.
Shareef Abdur-Rahim, a small forward from Cal, to Vancouver at number 3. Good move. Shareef is a baller. The Grizzlies took the whole process extremely seriously. In my workout with them, they looked at my vertical leap and how many pounds I could bench-press, and they put me through a few agility tests. From what I heard, they were that thorough with everyone.
Now the proceedings were about to really get interesting. The Bucks, I assumed, would pick me, in spite of the unusual day I spent there. Yet the moment I heard the commissioner call out, “Stephon Marbury,” all I could think was: Oh my God! I can’t believe it! I’m going to be a Celtic! There was no way Minnesota, picking right before Boston, was going to take me, not after I wouldn’t show up for the workout.
If that’s the case, I asked myself, then why are the cameramen from TNT rushin
g to my table?
They knew something I didn’t.
“With the fifth pick in the 1996 NBA Draft,” Stern said, reading from a card, “the Minnesota Timberwolves select Ray Allen from the University of Connecticut.”
What? Someone must have handed him the wrong card. It happens. Look at the 2017 Academy Awards.
It was the right card. I was going to Minnesota, and now I had to pretend I was excited about it. I got up, handed Tierra to my father, put on a Timberwolves cap, and, wearing a cream suit I bought for the occasion, went to the stage to shake hands with the commissioner, smiling the whole time.
Before I knew it, I was being interviewed by TNT’s Craig Sager.
“Minnesota’s a great city,” I said, meaning Minneapolis, of course. “They have a great organization, and I’ll be ready to play there next year.”
Was I a good actor, or what?
My next interview was with a television reporter from Minnesota. Gee, how much longer would I have to keep up this charade?
While I was giving another cliché answer, some league official interrupted. “Sorry, but we have to pull him out of this,” he said.
I had been traded for Marbury. Ultimately, the Bucks would also receive center Andrew Lang. Stephon and I exchanged hats in front of the cameras, and the draft went on. Some draft that was too, with names such as Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, Derek Fisher, and Antoine Walker.
You’d think I’d be relieved, wouldn’t you, Milwaukee being a lot better than . . . Minnesota? I wasn’t. Thirty minutes into my NBA career, and already somebody didn’t want me. I felt even worse when I found out fans who showed up to watch the draft at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee, where the Bucks played, booed the deal. This was the Midwest, where people knew very little about the Big East. They knew plenty about Stephon, on the other hand, and the teams he played against in the ACC.
Once I returned to the hotel, I began to cry. My family couldn’t figure out what was wrong.
