Sports Radio Interviews

Ray Allen: “You can’t talk about who you are and what you’re capable of…We have to go out every day and worry about getting better and thinking that we aren’t one of the best…”

After yet another impressive start to their season, the Boston Celtics are reeling a bit as All Star Weekend in the Association looms ever closer. Boston has lost three in a row after not having lost their third game until the end of the first week in November. Part of the problem has been the absence of Kevin Garnett, but if the Celtics have any sort of legitimate championship aspirations this summer, they better learn to win without The Big Ticket, as it’s not at all a given that his knees or the rest of his body will hold up for the remainder of the year. One player who continues to be Mr. Reliable is Ray Allen. He’s played in all 40 games to start the year and is Boston’s second leading scorer behind Paul Pierce at 16.1 points per game.

Allen joined WEEI in Boston with Dale and Holley to talk about the Celtics latest loss to the Pistons, how he would have handled getting heckled like Big Baby Davis was Wednesday night, how he continues to be in such great playing shape at his age, and how he’d like to finish his career wearing Celtic green.

On if he feels the Celtics are giving as much effort on a nightly basis as they were earlier in the season:

“I’ve never questioned any one of my teammates and where their effort lies, where their heart is. When you have so many players that can contribute and potentially be an All Star in the league, sometimes for most of us, doing less is more. You get in that situation sometimes, that you have to be able to know that taking a back seat to somebody and making sure that I make Glen Davis better and allow him to be successful, and allow Perk to be successful and visa-versa. Learning how to play as a team, regardless of what happens, everybody is concerned with the bottom line of winning. Everybody’s concerned with winning, everybody wants to win, but at the same time, you have to know how to go about doing that every night. Whoever gets the glory is going to get the glory, but winning is the ultimate objective.”

On Coach Rivers’ recent comments that the team might not be as good as they think they are and if he agrees or disagrees with that sentiment:

“That may be true, but then I just believe that if you ever say that you’re good – yeah, we’re great, we’re a good team – that to me is a little disconcerting, because you can’t talk about being great. You can’t talk about who you are and what you’re capable of. It’s like, any player in any sport, you never worry about being one of the best players in the league, you never talk about being one of the best players in the league – that’s for other people to decide for themselves. As a team, for us to say that we’re great or that we’re one of the best teams in the league, that may be the case, but for us to talk about it, it knocks us down a peg or two. We have to go out every day and worry about getting better and thinking that we aren’t one of the best and that’s what we’re striving to become one of the best by where we end up at the end of the year, and that’s hoisting the trophy up. That’s what determines the best team, and we can’t worry about talking about it, thinking…we just have to have those same habits every single day that are going to allow us to prove that we’re one of the best teams if not the best team in the NBA.”

On the upcoming All Star Game and his thoughts on guys like Allen Iverson and Tracy McGrady racking up so many votes:

“Well, every year we talk about the All Star voting and who should and who shouldn’t be – I would never talk about who shouldn’t be, because everybody who goes deserves it. But the issues a lot of times are dealing with the voting – I always believe that regardless of who you are, what your name of, how long you’ve been playing in the league, the best 10 players that year in the Western Conference and the Eastern Conference should have the opportunities to start. It’s become a popularity contest where from the fan voting, you figure you’re putting who you want to see in the All Star game. You say that’s what it’s all about, the All Star game is about the fan votes, but I would like to see the true valued player in the first half of the season get the chance to start in the All Star game, based on – okay if the fans vote, if they take 50 percent of the vote, and then you give another 25 percent to the players that are in the league and then the media 25 percent. Because you know, media watches just as much games, knows just as much about the players as the players and coaches in the league itself – I think that would give a great representation of who the best players are that first half of the season and reward them for what they’ve done – and then the coaches vote for the reserves. To me, you see baseball, baseball every year seems like they have it right because baseballs such a statistics game, the best statistics are going to win out every time regardless of who you are and what your name is…and that’s the question to see, and I’d like to see that in our game as well.”

On the somewhat disappointing home record of the Celtics and if chemistry might be an issue that explains their uncharacteristically poor play at home:

“I don’t think chemistry is an issue – I don’t like to make excuses, but we started out the season on fire and the one issue we’ve had is offensive rebounding against us. And the first our or five games we lost, that’s why we lost. You figure, we start off the season and we didn’t have Glen Davis with us, and we we’re always a team that thought okay when we get Glen back, we’ll be better. But we still hit the ground running, doing what we have to do to get better. Along the way, we’ve had injuries, and we’ve been dealing with that the last few months, so, we’re just a team that is just trying to make sure we get better, everyone stays healthy, and trying to figure out the best way to play, how we need to play, and then when we get a full assembly of guys on the floor, we look forward to doing that, getting better, moving forward, and sure up some of the small, little mistakes or wrong doings we have out there on the floor.”

On Big Baby Davis getting heckled last night by a fan and how he suggests handling that type of situation:

“That’s probably one of the best questions I’ve heard in a long time, because I think people have such great access to our games, and there’s so much yelling going on and there’s so much heckling going on, and people want to go to the games – and that’s what’s great about the NBA. I’ve been around some very volatile teammates in my career, and I’ve seen guys jump on other people, I’ve seen it for other players on other teams around the league, and it always seems like the wrong way to handle it is to lash back at somebody else in the crowd. Because the crowd, they’re heckling, they’re doing what they’re supposed to be, you’re on the road – even if you’re at home, our job is to stay out and stay focused on the floor and make your teammates better and improve what you’re doing on the floor, listen to what the coach is doing. For me, personally, nobody has ever said anything to me that has gotten under my skin. People have said things that I’ve heard, that I’ve said, wow, that was pretty cold. But they would never know that it bothered me because the people that watch me play most of the time on the road don’t know who I am. They might have an idea of who they think I am, and who may be in my family life, and what kind of guy they think I am, but when they start yelling insults, its typically just to break me. I’m out on the floor, and any guy I think yells back at the fans I think is uncalled for. I say, personally, if you ignore him, the guy keeps yelling it out, you keep ignoring him, and then eventually everybody around him in the crowd is going to say shut up dummy, he’s not listening to you or he doesn’t hear you and it makes him look bad. But when we as players yell back at the crowd, I think it makes us look bad, look unfocused.”

Then, on if he’s had a chance to share that advice with Davis:

“I didn’t know that anything happened. I didn’t hear about him and any crowd or anything he did – it’s just one of those things for younger players in the league that, as you get older, you learn certain things – you stay away from certain people in the crowd, you stay away from certain pitfalls of the game because at the end of the day, it makes us as players look bad if you’re not paying attention to the game and worrying about what somebody in the crowd is saying. Because that’s what being on the road is all about sometimes, having to deal with people who don’t particularly like you. We run out on the floor, when they say welcome to the building of the Boston Celtics – the whole building moves. That’s part of it. It’s like the Empire Strikes Back. You come in there, people are really going in on you, you have to say hey we’re on the road, it’s going to be tough, they don’t like us here, they may be a rival team – whatever it is, we have to come together, make sure everybody does their job, and focus a little bit more.”

On if he’d like to remain in Boston after this year:

“This is my favorite part of the country – I lived in Connecticut as well, so I am home. I love the people here. The fans here are the best fans that I’ve seen anywhere. I’ve seen some traditionally great franchises in sports in America, but there are no fans like Boston fans. I mean that. The people here have been so great and so supportive and it’s a different feeling here in this city when it comes to sports teams. There’s no other place I’d rather be. It’s hard to play here, and I guarantee you that most players that have played here, whether you play for the Sox, you played for the Patriots, the Bruins, the Celtics – when you leave here, the feeling is just not the same. Being part of a tradition, a city of fans that follow their team the way they do – you can wear a Sox jersey to a Celtics game and hey, he’s cheering, he’s with us. We’re all the same. Players in the city, support each other, there’s no rivalries, there’s no hatred. It’s like hey man, you come to our games, we’ll put you on the 50-yard line, we’ll put you anywhere you need to sit because we need your support. And, I’ve played in other cities and it’s not necessarily the exact same.”

Listen here to Allen with Dale & holley on WEEI in Boston

Tags: Boston Celtics, Celtics slumping, Kevin Garnett, NBA All Star voting, Ray Allen, Ray Allen contract situation, WEEI