2008 Celtics reunite, detail ‘sour breakup’ with Ray Allen
Five members of the Celtics’ 2008 championship team reunited Monday night on Kevin Garnett’s TNT show, but one was conspicuously absent: Ray Allen.
Rajon Rondo caused a stir when he said in March that Allen would not be invited to the team’s reunion vacation this summer.
“I mean, Ray left. He left to the enemy,” Rondo told The Undefeated, referring to Allen’s decision to sign with the Heat.
Rondo, Garnett, Paul Pierce, Kendrick Perkins and Glen Davis were joined by coach Doc Rivers for a segment, which sparked social media discussion of Allen’s absence. Later in the show, the five players elaborated on the situation. The common theme was that they wished Allen had communicated better about his decision to leave.
“People don’t understand that this is real life for us,” Garnett said. “The situation with Ray is very sensitive. When we all talked about doing this reunion, we were talking about guys we considered loyal and part of this group.”
“I was initially hurt by the way the whole thing went down,” Pierce said. “I don’t have no beef with none of my teammates. I was just hurt on how it went down. We all came together, we talked about it, we talked every day, we hung out all the time. When it was time for free agency... I thought we formed a brotherhood in Boston. I just thought if it was me leaving or KG leaving, we would have been [calling our teammates] like ‘this is what I’ve been thinking about.’ That’s what I was hurt by. When Ray didn’t at least give us a heads-up about it. ... I just thought we should have had a conversation about it and then it would have settled over more.
“Now it’s uncomfortable,” Pierce continued. “I haven’t talked to Ray in some years now.
• Scot Pollard was left out of the Celtics’ reunion by accident and found out on Twitter
“It ain’t what Ray did, it’s how he did it,” Perkins said. “Just a lack of communication, man, however it was. But at the end of the day, I feel like time heals all wounds. ... Who’s gonna break the ice? At this point in time, I don’t feel like it’s on nobody on here to break the ice. I actually feel like it’s on Ray to break the ice.”
“Think about when you’re with a girl for nine or ten years and you break up, and it’s just sour,” Pierce said. “That’s what it felt like. It felt like a sour breakup.”
In a Periscope segment filmed during the Warriors-Jazz game, Perkins brought up the animosity between Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, saying that part of what made Westbrook upset was the Durant broke the news of his move to Golden State through a text message.
“Along the same lines of what we were talking about with Ray,” Pierce said. “At least he got a text.”
The relationship does not appear to be beyond repair, though. At the end of the night’s Inside the NBA broadcast, Garnett said “we have no ill will to Ray.”
Allen responded on Tuesday will a simple Facebook post and a picture of him and Rondo with the caption "The power to push limits."
Later Tuesday, Allen’s publicist told ESPN’s Rachel Nichols that Allen’s Facebook was in fact, hacked.
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