Legendary shooter Ray Allen, 41, has officially announced his retirement from the NBA. Allen last played in 2013-14 for the Miami Heat.
Ray Allen flirted with an NBA comeback last season but ultimately chose to sit it out. After going unsigned again this summer, Allen announced his retirement Tuesday at the age of 41. The future Hall of Famer made the announcement in a special edition of The Players’ Tribune’s “Letter to My Younger Self” series.
Allen retires as the greatest three-point shooter of all time. He’s the career leader in three-point FGM (2,973) and FGA (7,429). Despite all those shots he was still an incredible 40.0% from beyond the arc.
https://youtu.be/fOqmjFlW6AY
Allen was also known for being automatic from the free thrown line. He retires with an 89.4% career mark from the charity stripe, good for 7th in league history. Allen was in the top 10 of the league in free throw percentage for 14 of his 18 seasons.
Allen’s teams had very little postseason success before he was famously traded to the Boston Celtics in the same summer as Kevin Garnett. The two came together with Paul Pierce and subsequently won a championship. Allen is the last of that big 3 to announce he’s done. Garnett retired in September, and Pierce announced the 2016-17 season would be his last.
Allen will be remembered most for his time in Boston. Not for when he packed up his talents and took them down to South Beach to share with rival LeBron James’ Miami Heat. Sorry, but I had to bring that up.
