Ray Allen, one of the best shooting guards in NBA history and a recently named finalist for the Hall of Fame, has a new book dropping in two weeks. From the Outside: My Journey through Life and the Game I Love, written alongside sportswriter Michael Arkush, details Allen's career and his rise to basketball prominence.
In it, Allen confirms what anyone who follows the NBA's torrid news cycle already knows: NBA locker rooms are full of drama.
"The locker room is like high school sometimes, with the cliques that form and the gossip, much of it untrue, that somebody spreads," Allen writes.
That high school mentality extends long after a player's career is over. Allen reportedly avoided Paul Pierce's Boston Celtics jersey retirement ceremony in February because he didn't want to be a distraction. Though it appears most of the wounds from that era have healed, Allen still has a public beef with former Celtics floor general Rajon Rondo.
Allen also butted heads with the equally strong-willed Kevin Garnett during their time as Boston's "Big Three," which lasted from 2007-2012. The former UConn Huskie remembers when Garnett attempted to get him to stop dribbling in front of his locker before a preseason game in Rome in 2007, when they were first getting acclimated with each other as teammates.
"No, you're not going to do that," Allen says Garnett told him.
"You can’t tell me what to do," Allen says he responded. "You do what you do, and I do what I do."
Allen said things even got a little testy when they went out for dinner one night and Garnett demanded he receive the check and not Allen—because, Garnett insisted, he was the better tipper.
"What struck me was that he felt the need to be seen as being superior to me, even in something as petty as this," Allen writes.
Oddly enough, Allen and Rondo were close during their early tenure as teammates.
"I couldn't have gotten along with him any better," Allen writes. "He was like a little brother to me." Their mentor-mentee relationship eventually deteriorated over time.
Though Allen does not point out a direct cause for the rift, the book does include a number of interesting anecdotes about Rondo. For example, Rondo once told his teammates, "I carried all of you to the championship in 2008," which they couldn't believe
For a full recap of Allen's forthcoming book, check out Sean Deveney's excellent summary for the Sporting News.
