One of the greatest 3-point shooters of all time announced his retirement from the game Tuesday morning.
Ray Allen, who owns the small space between the sideline and the 3-point line, hasn't played since the 2014 NBA Finals with the Miami Heat. A year before that, June 18, he made one of the most iconic shots in NBA history in Game 6 of the 2013 Finals against the San Antonio Spurs.
It was supposed to be for LeBron James - a play the team ran in practice, in shootarounds, "hundreds and hundreds of times," Chris Bosh told USA TODAY Sports' Jeff Zillgitt. They'd never actually used it.
Miami was down three points. The crew with a yellow rope was waiting on the sidelines, ready to present the Spurs with their trophy. Fans had admitted defeat and left. Then Allen caught a rebound from Bosh.
(Video courtesy: YouTube)
With 5.2 seconds left, Allen made the massive three and lifted the white-hot Heat crowd onto its feet, forcing overtime.
"Get those mother------- ropes out of here," Allen shouted at the buzzer, to that same yellow-rope crew.
The shot haunted Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, and rightfully so. The Heat went on to win 103-100 over Popovich's team.
"It goes through my mind every day," Popovich said to Sports Illustrated's Lee Jenkins, nearly six months later. "It's gone through my mind every day since the game, and I'll be happy when it only goes through my mind once a week."
The Heat went on to win Game 7 and capture their second title in two years, and none of that would have happened without Bosh passing the ball to Allen, quietly waiting in a place he's most familiar with.
As Allen told Zillgitt in October after the title win, "You see where the line is, even if you don't look at it.
"I see out of my peripheral. I know where the line is. I know based on the parameters of the court where the line is. I've done it for so long this space to me is huge."
For Allen, the art of the three came from a career's worth of careful and meticulous repetition. Former Heat teammate Shane Battier said the confidence comes from that regimen, noting Allen is "almost OCD with his preparation."
"When I first got to Milwaukee, guys used to always step out of bounds," Allen said. "The coach (Chris Ford) always used to get mad. I used to try and run into the space and not move at all. You know what you're dealing with and try to get that movement to a minimum."
This shot never, never gets old. Thanks, Ray.
