Ray Allen isn’t done talking about the Celtics and Rajon Rondo just yet. He should be, he should just stop answering questions about his time in Boston and let his play do the talking, but he’s not.
So in a series of interviews last week, Allen talked more about how he came to leave Boston and his rift with Rondo. Which was overblown but did impact the team to a degree.
Speaking the Miami Herald, he gave some backstory — at least from his perspective — on the well-publicized feud with Rondo. Consider this his version of how everything started to go wrong for him in Boston.
He said the friction with Rondo began in 2009 when Rivers and Celtics president Danny Ainge proposed a trade that would have sent Allen and Rondo to Phoenix for Amare Stoudemire, Leandro Barbosa and the 14th overall pick in the 2010 draft.
Allen said that, at the time, Ainge and Rivers “didn’t get along” with Rondo.
“So, I called him and I told him, ‘hey they’re supposedly trading us to Phoenix because you and Danny and Doc don’t get along,’” Allen said. “‘So, whatever you can do.’ So, for some reason, I guess he thought that I was … that I had something against him, or there were some issues. And I had no issues with him. I won with him.”
For Allen, that may have been the foundation of everything. However, the real turning point with Allen’s relationship with the Celtics organization is when a trade with Memphis got so far down the road Doc Rivers told Allen he was being traded, only to have that fall apart.
The Rondo/Allen rift, however deep it was, had Boston considering its options with Allen. Rondo is the future of the Celtics. Then Miami comes in with a real courtship of Allen, telling him how they wanted to use him, how their stars needed him. No shock it worked, we all want to be wanted. The key was not the money — Boston offered double — it was about feeling needed and appreciated.
I’d like to think this will fade away, but with the Heat playing the Celtics on opening night, I’m not optimistic.