Somebody was sick, so Stephen Curry got to step in. He was not yet 11 years old, attending his father Dell’s practice with the Milwaukee Bucks, and the coach, George Karl, invited him to participate in a shooting contest with his father against Glenn Robinson, Vinny Del Negro and Sam Cassell, who trash-talked through the whole thing.
The third member of the Currys’ victorious team?
Ray Allen.
Yes, Allen’s been around a while.
“Whenever I see him, we laugh about that,” Stephen said before the team he now leads, Golden State, beat Allen’s Heat club Wednesday night.
More than 13 years after that high-spirited session, Allen, 37, is still winning shooting contests. That longevity has let him encounter dozens of young guards eager to prove their worth by beating one of the best.
The challengers once included a nervous college kid named Dwyane Wade, during offseason workouts back when Allen was a Buck and Wade was at Marquette.
“We went against each other a lot,” Wade said. “Obviously, my game wasn’t like his. But I looked up to what he was able to do as a two-guard, somebody who was close to my height. It made me better.”
Now that he’s nearly 31, Wade is experiencing what Allen long has:
“I understand that for a few years now, I’ve been one of those two-guards in the league where guys, say, ‘Yo, I want to get to that level,’ ” said Wade, who Saturday night will face Washington’s Bradley Beal and Jordan Crawford, just 19 and 24, respectively.
“You can tell. Ray and I have both been in that position, where you go against someone at your position that you either grew up idolizing, modeling your game after, but now it’s competitive, and you want to see where you stack up.”
If you entered the NBA in 1996, as Allen did, those living legends were the likes of Clyde Drexler, Reggie Miller, Mitch Richmond and, of course, Michael Jordan. Allen always appreciated when they greeted him by saying “Welcome to the NBA,” because it made him feel like an equal, albeit one with plenty to learn.
“It was almost like a rite of passage,” Allen said. “It always showed me that there’s great lineage in this league, and we had to take care of it when we got to being good in this league.”
One night in Milwaukee, Jordan provided a doctorate-level education. There was Allen, sprinting, clawing, fighting to deny Jordan in the post.
“He would just flash over the top and they’d throw him the ball and he would just shoot it, and it would go in,” Allen said. “But here I was, working my ass off every possession, trying to take something away from him, but he just had a counter to everything and it seemed like he was barely working.”
So Chris Ford, Allen’s coach, kept screaming encouragement and instructions (“Rook, watch out for this!”) even as Allen and Jordan awaited a free throw near the Bucks’ bench.
Jordan shot a look over to Ford, and then said: “He’s doing as good a job as anybody. Don’t worry about it. There’s nothing he can do.”
Ford’s shoulders dropped, as if he understood.
“That this is Michael Jordan you’re talking about here,” Allen said.
Wade faced an additional challenge in his rookie season, learning to play the unfamiliar position of point guard. Nor did he get to break in easy, not in the preseason or regular season, both of which started with matchups against Philadelphia’s Allen Iverson.
“That wasn’t cool,” Wade said, smiling.
As the season progressed, he began to identify his own advantages, “to make it a little even.” In the playoffs, he would draw New Orleans’ Baron Davis, who was explosive, expressive and encouraging.
“It was weird to me,” Wade said. “Baron would say a lot to me during the games when he was guarding me. That’s how I knew he was on another level … He was kind of coaching me at times. ‘Don’t do that, don’t do that.’ It made me a little nervous. Like, wait a minute.”
Plenty of minutes have passed since those days, and Wade and Allen are now veteran targets and sages. During the Heat’s November trip to Atlanta, Hawks assistant
Nick Van Exel had one of his young guards wait out Allen’s shooting sessions, so Allen could impart advice afterward. Allen senses that many young players are watching, searching.
“It’s a fine line for us, regardless of how old you are, you’re still competing against that young kid,” Allen said. “So you want to compete against them, so there’s that aspect of welcoming those young guys into the league, and hoping they are almost the torch-carriers to the next generation.”
Lebron gonna get that MVP, and Allen 6th man.
breh you been denied by both fan bases go become a raptors fan
