The Unfair Treatment of Ray Allen

[Pogue Mahone]

I think it is time that we all have an actual discussion about what Ray Allen does and does not bring to the table.

It seems whenever someone attempts to make a criticism of Ray's game, valid or not, the poster is jumped on by 5 or 6 other posters. Yet we have had threads that deal with questioning the veracity of Pierce's talent, the up-in-arms reactions to the 5th or 6th big off the bench, multiple discussions about our starting PG, etc.

Why is Ray Allen off limits? Why does Ray Allen get a free pass? Why does Ray Allen get preferential treatment from the online contingent of the fanbase as compared to the support of every other player on the roster?

Why has there been zero discussion over Ray Allen missing three consecutive defensive rotations last night? If it was a player with less cache, say Gabe Pruitt or JR Giddens, wouldn't there be at least one discussion questioning if he belongs on the team nevermind the playoff roster? Not three in a game ... three in a row. He misses at least three rotations on a game to game basis.

Why are we not allowed to talk about Ray Allen's indifference to putting a body on a man when he is supposed to help? Multiple times against the Magic, our big men stepped up to stop penetration and it was Ray's responsibility to slide in and put a body on Howard/Battie/Gortat. I counted 15 such occurrences where it was clearly his responsibility. He did it once. If a player shoots 1-15, people go on the war path. Yet when it comes to Ray Allen's lack of defense, it gets swept under the rug. God forbid someone points out that it was likely indifference that led to Ray's failure to do so. What is worse; being physically over-matched or being indifferent? At least if you are over-matched there is still a slight chance that something productive occurs for your team.

Why is it not ok to question the gameplan of running Ray off of picks as a staple of the offense? Why do common sense and points per possession not count when it comes to anything to do with Ray? Do people assume that just because a player has a personal high shooting efficiency, by proxy, he automatically helps the rest of the team?

Why is it assumed that a player who shoots from outside automatically provides floor space and discipline in maintaining that spacing? Why do people assume that spacing in the post is all that matters? Why is Ray allowed to bring his man into other players' zones, often disrupting the continuity of the play he is not directly involved in?

Ray Allen is an individually talented basketball player. He can not/will not play as a consistent off-the-ball option and that hurts overall team efficiencies. He lacks the handles, space discipline and understanding of passing angles to create consistent good looks for teammates.

If his level of impact was as consistently high as many of his athletic supporters profess, he should be able to carry an entire team without Paul Pierce or Kevin Garnett.

Every player has warts. It is up to the coach to put them in pairings and in situations to best minimize them. Unfortunately for Celtics fans, Ray has a raging case of genital warts that are flaring up at the worst possible time.

[Celts17Pride]

Yawn!

Let's get 200 trade Ray Allen threads going.

[BillessuR6]

I think you have this backwards. Ray Allen is the one that has been mentioned in trade scenarios on this board more times than any other player. Posters have been trying to trade him for junk since he got here. He is under appreciated on this forum but luckily some fans still recognize what he bring to the table.

He has his faults like any other player but he also has skills that not many players in this league have. It is sad that you only see the bad and not the good.

[Bad-Thoma]

The whole team had trouble rotating last night at times, the Magic were getting penetration early and the bigs had to leave the basket giving Howard a lot of easy put backs and a few easy dunks off passes. Considering the way the magic shoot 3's I'm not surprised that our rotations looked bad when they were getting penetration at the point of attack. In the second half when we started covering the pick and roll better the d started to look really good again. While Ray isn't a great defender I really didn't see him doing anything out of the norm, it's hard to go from the 3 point line to covering Dwight Howard on a pick and roll, then back again on a kick out. The Magic are a very good offensive team and we held them to 84 points with a beat up team and a lot of Ray Allen on the floor. When this team is healthy they play great defense consistently, which is a 5 guy proposition. To suggest that the C's are somehow doing this despite of a lack of effort from Ray is ridiculous. As for Ray offensively the only thing I can agree on is that I don't like to see him dribbling too much, but that can go for anyone on the team except Rondo and Marbs. Frankly Pierce, as much as I love him, scares me more when he dribbles, he can be a turn over machine at times. The biggest thing I think you are off-base on is Ray moving without the ball, he does a lot of Reggie Miller, Rip Hamilton-esque moving to get open, running through double picks to get free, and any coach of any time of any era will gladly have Ray taking open shots. Other than the dreaded Paul Pierce iso I don't think there is a play that Ray is not an option on (how many times have we seen KG or Perk in the post kick to a wide open Ray Allen, this does not happen because Ray is standing around), and when Paul Iis one-on-one, Ray is usually in the corner where a defender has to respect his presense, provinding spacing. I know I'm not convincing you of anything Pogue, but I really just see an intelligent poster with a dumb bias when I read your Ray Allen critisicms. Ray is a future HOF lock, he doesn't carry this team but neither does anyone else, to suggest that they win in spite of him somehow just makes zero sense to me, especially from someone who obviously understands the game well and is well written.

[bruno sundov]

I say we trade Ray Allen for Raef lafrents or Mark Blount. Is this helping? LOL

[Cyclical]

I think this is a bit blown out of proportion to be honest. When an opposing team scores only 84 points on us I'm not about to look for a scapegoat on defense. A few assignments are missed on a nightly basis and while Ray did miss some he was not the only one. If anything, my criticism is the he was underutilized down the stretch on offense. Though Paul was great, a little spreading of the wealth to Ray would have probably won us the game. After that last 3 of his it was painful just watching him watching Paul play iso-ball. Ray's there mainly for his outstanding shooting - though he should always try to get better and obviously not miss his assignments he'll never be a great defender. Sadly we can't have it all. My bigger point is I'll start criticizing players for lack of defense when teams actually score on us, rather than post a 14 point 4th quarter. Wait, no, that's not true, I'll still criticize Mikki. Still, the main problem last night was on the offensive end.

[armageddon]

Ray's still a borderline allstar, offensively.

Unfortunately, he's just not worth his salary anymore which is typical of older stars. He's significantly slowed down and can no longer get around his defender with the dribble. This means that he now struggles with creating his own shot (something we're starting to see with PP). He doesn't even get seperation when running his guy off picks. But - he still can shoot and is still is critical to the team's success. Just don't let him dribble the ball above the 3-pt line because he's going to back up to mid-court or throw it away.

Without Ray, our offense dies when PP sits. And yes he's weak defensively. And yes he leads the league in wimpy fouls. He is what he is.

[GreenMachine]

Maybe because Ray is our most consistent player? Not our Best, but most consistent.

[BRUNiNHO91]

Jesus.....literally...pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

[Pogue Mahone]

All legitimate comments (well, not really all but better than I expected.)

Am I unfairly biased towards Ray Allen? Probably. I will qualify that by stating that I find my irritation with his game grows as more and more people ignore his faults and harp on the rest of the roster for their shortcomings. Why put one player above the rest of the team? Why should Ray Allen be immune to legitimate criticism? From where I am sitting, Sam Cassell didn't kill Ubuntu. Ray Allen did in early December 2007.

Lets talk about the pros and cons of Ray's game, though. Let's try to do it in an unbiased manner. As one of Ray's biggest detractors, I am willing to set down my bias and make the attempt to do so. Can the people that support him the most attempt to do the same?

[kmgarnett21]

Ray Allen KILLED Ubuntu??? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL....(gotta take a breath)....

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOOLOLOLOLOLOL



WOW.

[Spud34]

Why is it not ok to question the gameplan of running Ray off of picks as a staple of the offense? Why do common sense and points per possession not count when it comes to anything to do with Ray? Do people assume that just because a player has a personal high shooting efficiency, by proxy, he automatically helps the rest of the team?

I don't understand those plays. Why is Ray Allen the only person who comes off screens? What happened to Pierce coming off a screen for a jumper? At least when Pierce has the ball in that situation, he tries to set up teammates. We run that play all game, it doesn't help out anyone except Rondo and Ray.

[Fencer reregistered]

I find Allen's game to be quite different from his rep coming in.

He was supposed to be an OK quasi-PG. Instead, he's a ghastly passer. His choices in passing aren't terrible, but he doesn't execute the passes competently.

He was also supposed to be a weak defender. But I'm not seeing that, either with my eyes or in the box scores. When Ray's hands are nearby, balls often go in different directions than opponents want them to. That's one of the major hallmarks of good defense.

[Spud34]

I find Allen's game to be quite different from his rep coming in.

He was supposed to be an OK quasi-PG. Instead, he's a ghastly passer. His choices in passing aren't terrible, but he doesn't execute the passes competently.

He was also supposed to be a weak defender. But I'm not seeing that, either with my eyes or in the box scores. When Ray's hands are nearby, balls often go in different directions than opponents want them to. That's one of the major hallmarks of good defense.

Get your eyes checked.

[Pogue Mahone]

Fencer, I agree. I don't give him enough credit for the deflections.

I was real high on him before he came to the Celtics. I assumed he would be an off-the-ball security valve. I had a rude awakening when transformed into a ball-stopper. I also made the mistake of assuming that Ray could shoot from anywhere because he was that talented. If you notice, his preferred areas of operation are the same as Pierce's. One of them had to subjugate his game for the betterment of the other. Any guesses which one made the sacrifice?

[greenbeans]

Surprise surprise! Ray Allen isn't the perfect basketball player. News!

[Bad-Thoma]

Another thing I've heard you say before and you say here now that I just don't get is "Ray Allen killed Ubuntu." First off, no one has killed ubuntu, this team never lies down and is still a very unselfish team, though of late while we have struggled players have at times taken it upon themselves to try and shoulder too much of the load. When the team is healthy they are pretty consistently a great ball movement team, when everyone is out there the scoring balance is usually pretty good also. As for Ray directly he was a 26 point per game guy before he came here and of the big 3 was the least incorporated into the offense last season, struggling to find his role at times. I've never ever heard Ray utter a word of complaint or seen him come off his even keel since he's been a Celtic. This year for most of the season he was getting great looks within the offense, and other than a couple games when we struggled an he was on fire he has continued to let the scoring come to him. My biggest knock on Ray has been him handling the ball too much as a distributor, but as with Tony Allen it was a necessity at times when Rondo was off the floor, now that Marbs is here we've seen less of it and as Marbs improves it'll be a non-factor, IMO. This whole ubuntu-killer label is another thing that I really don't understand at all. Ray's sacrificed just as much personal production as anyone else on the team to make the team better. To go back to your first post, "Do people assume that just because a player has a personal high shooting efficiency, by proxy, he automatically helps the rest of the team," I think the fact that Ray's numbers are only what they are but he is scoring so efficiently IS telling, he's consistently taking what the defense gives him. To be honest I am much more of a PP fan than a Ray fan, but I am more concerned with the amount of PP isolations we see when we struggle and the offense stalls, I know he can carry the team when he needs to but the ball movement that has won us so many games just dies when that happens. It is very rare to see that happen with Ray, and the times it has happened it's been because Ray was simply on fire.

[Red2]

I love Ray for the simple reason that at any moment he can win a game for you. Last night he got one shot down the stretch and nailed a 3. One of my issues with running pierce iso for 5 minutes straight is that other guys don't get involved. How come Pierce didn't drive and kick to Ray on one of those plays? There's no one on this team I would rather have shooting the ball than Ray Allen. Having said that he didn;t defend Lee very well and he struggled to get open. At times he is guilty of overpassing. There are games where I would like to see him take over and he doesn't do it. And there are a lot of times when I say to myself that he's too soft and too much of a finesse player. But in the end he's an incredible luxury to have on your team and I wouldn't trade him any time soon. He opens things up for garnett perk and Pierce. I just wish doc would go a better job of getting ray involved in the O. Even after 2 years he doesn't go to ray enough.

[Bad-Thoma]

I find Allen's game to be quite different from his rep coming in.

He was supposed to be an OK quasi-PG. Instead, he's a ghastly passer. His choices in passing aren't terrible, but he doesn't execute the passes competently.

He was also supposed to be a weak defender. But I'm not seeing that, either with my eyes or in the box scores. When Ray's hands are nearby, balls often go in different directions than opponents want them to. That's one of the major hallmarks of good defense.

I can agree completely with this, I think Ray isn't a good passer (though ghastly might be a strong word). His assist totals dominating the ball on bad teams probably led to the rep of being a good passer much like playing on bad defensive teams led to the rep of not being a good defender. The same could be said for PP and KG to an extent, though better passers than Ray they both get less assists together than they did dominating the ball, and Paul wasn't known for his defense on bad Celtic teams even though he was a good defender (KG's D obviously has always been well known). As for his passing he's no black hole, he usually lets go of the ball quickly if he doesn't have his shot, but the execution remark is spot-on fencer. Though statistically Rays assists/turnover ratio is 1.6/1 compared to Paul's 1.28/1 so Ray may be the wiser of not forcing as much.

[Bad-Thoma]

mispost ;(