Next year, Rajon Rondo will host a vacation with his former Celtics teammates to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Boston’s 2008 NBA championship. All of the members of that stellar team will be invited, with one notable exception: Ray Allen. From Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated:
“I asked a couple of the guys. I got a no, a no head shake,” said Rondo to The Undefeated when asked why Allen wasn’t invited.
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“It will be a long story about that, but it is what it is,” Rondo, who plays for the Chicago Bulls, told The Undefeated. “I don’t know a good analogy to put this in. It just wasn’t the greatest separation. It wasn’t the greatest thing that could’ve happened to us as a team, a bond. We were at war with those guys [Miami]. To go with the enemy, that’s unheard-of in sports. Well, it’s not so unheard of. It’s damn near common now.
“The mindset we had. The guys on our team. You wouldn’t do anything like that. It makes you question that series in the Finals … Who were you for? You didn’t bleed green. People think we had a messed-up relationship. It’s not the greatest. But it’s not just me. I called and reached out to a couple of other vets and asked them what they wanted to do with the situation. They told me to stick with what we got [without Allen].”
In the free agency following the Celtics’ loss to the Miami Heat in the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals, Ray Allen joined the Heat, and played a large role in their 2013 championship.
One former Celtics player from the 2008 NBA championship team said of Allen’s exclusion from the party: “I mean, Ray left. He left to the enemy.”
Allen, the NBA’s all-time leader in career three-pointers, was undeniably a big part of why the Celtics were able to win in ’08, but any tension existing between Allen and his former teammates is understandable. Allen and Rondo had reportedly butted heads during their time in Boston, but Rondo told Spears that had his teammates wanted Allen to come along, he would have invited him.
