Ray Allen Announces Retirement In Letter To 13-Year-Old Self
BOSTON (CBS) -- Ray Allen is calling it a career.
After two years away from basketball, the 18-year NBA sharpshooter announced his retirement Tuesday on The Players' Tribune in a heartfelt letter to his 13-year-old self.
In the letter, Allen warns his younger self of all the detractors he'll meet along the way, urging him to hit the basketball court and not listen to any of them:
A lot of people don't want to see you succeed. Don't get into fistfights with these kids. Trust me, it will accomplish nothing.
Instead, remember exactly who said those things.
Remember how they said it.
Remember their faces.
Keep these voices inside your head and use them as fuel every single day when you wake up.
And the voices telling you you're the man? Those are the voices to keep out. When you start getting some national attention in high school, you'll hear things like, "Ray's jumpshot is God-given."
Listen: God doesn't care whether you make your next jump shot.
God will give you a lot of things in life, but he's not going to give you your jump shot. Only hard work will do that.
Allen goes on to share stories of his first college practice at UConn and the sense of accomplishment he felt attending his first college class. He discusses winning NBA titles with Boston and Miami, pointing to "boring old habits" as the common ground between two very different championship teams.
With the new NBA season beginning last week, rumors began to surface about the 41-year-old Allen looking to make a return to the game. But with Tuesday's announcement there will be no mid-to-late-season signing for Allen, and his career officially comes to an end for the future Hall of Famer.
Allen was the fifth overall pick in the 1996 NBA Draft by the Milwaukee Bucks, whom he spent the first six-and-a-half years of his career with before being traded to the Seattle Sonics. After five years in Seattle he was traded to the Boston Celtics on draft night in 2007, forming a new Big Three with Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, and playing a key role in Boston's 2008 title team. He spent five seasons with the Celtics, earning three of his 10 All-Star bids, before signing with the Miami Heat in 2012. The Heat won the NBA title in 2013, with Allen hitting a clutch game-tying three pointer with 5.2 seconds left in Game 6. The Heat went on to win the game in overtime, and won Game 7 of the series.
Allen retires as one of the NBA's greatest shooters, holding the record for three pointers made with 2,973. He passed Reggie Miller's previous mark as a member of the Celtics during the 2011 season, and finished his career averaging 18.9 points per game on 45 percent shooting from the floor and 40 percent from beyond the arc.
