Ray Allen Says He Had No Choice But to Leave Boston

Ray Allen opens up about his reasons for choosing the Miami Heat over the Boston Celtics this summer. Allen says that, among other factors, his decision largely came down to money (even though he took less than Boston was offering to sign with the Heat). From WMEN in Miami (via SRI): “I hate it with a passion anywhere I go where we are beating the team by 20 and the fans boo. Because you never go out on the floor and try to be bad or try to suck out there. Everybody wants to be the best player they possibly could be and make a lot of money and win a championship. It’s just sometimes it’s not your night, like you face a team that’s tough and they put you in difficult position and a lot of times the reason why people boo is I don’t think they could understand what it’s like to do that on a nightly basis. You are traveling and you are in certain situations where everybody plays the ‘armchair quarterback,’ you know, sitting around and talking about what you could do and what somebody should do. We do it every Monday when we watch the highlights from football from that Sunday because you talk about bonehead plays and all these different situations, so I always say ‘Never judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes.’ How did you deal with all the negativity of you leaving Boston because you chose to come here? ‘Well it was just really a shame because on one hand you could say so many great things about me as a player and my impact on the floor, and not only on the floor but off the floor, like we did so many great things in the community — not only as a team, but as individuals — and that was my community and I support it as much as I could. We had some foundation initiatives that we still continue to do, so that doesn’t change me. It was a business decision and the team put me in the position where we had to move. We had to go. Miami was a better choice for us based on what the team was doing, so it wasn’t, don’t boo me, boo the team in a sense. Now it’s out of my control. … When this contract situation came down, everybody in my circle — mom, family, brother, sister, friends from college, people who watched me since I was in high school and since I was in college — nobody wanted me to resign in that situation because they thought, ‘There [is] so much left in you and this team isn’t taking care of you or treating you right.’ That’s the way I felt and it was like, if you are going to come and not put out a good contract on the table then, hey, we gotta think about going somewhere else.’”