Pierce & Garnett Discuss Allen’s Departure And It’s Fascinating
My two favorite teams in my lifetime are the 2004 Boston Red Sox and the 2008 Boston Celtics. Today we are focusing on the latter as that Celtic team had a reunion last night. On Kevin Garnett’s Area 21 show, he brought in former teammates Paul Pierce, Rajon Rondo, Kendrick Perkins and Glenn “Big Baby” Davis. Even former Head Coach Doc Rivers made an appearance on Skype. But it came to no one’s surprise that a certain member of the Big 3 wasn’t there. But what was a surprise is that these teammates addressed the elephant in the room. Here’s the entire video.
While there have been times that Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett have talked about Ray Allen’s departure, they have never gone into so much depth like they did the other night. For me the highlights of the conversation came from obviously the other members of the Big 3. As the show’s host, Garnett led off by saying “People don’t understand that this is real life for us. The situation with Ray is very sensitive and when I was considering to do a reunion, we wanted to bring back guys who we considered loyal.” Pierce followed up saying “I was just hurt on the way it went down. I thought we formed a brotherhood in Boston. I was just hurt that Ray didn’t give us a heads up. It’s just uncomfortable now and I haven’t talked to Ray in years.” Perkins even added “It ain’t what Ray did, it’s actually how he did it. I think at this point; it’s actually on Ray to break the ice.”
Now I’ve seen this multiple times, but no matter how much I watch this video; it remains just as fascinating as the first time I watched this. Except for Rondo who basically said nothing (which hilarious in its own right), these former Celtics showed real and raw emotion. They also talked about the situation like they lost a brother and not a teammate. I didn’t expect that but it made it that much more sad. So I get it from that point of view, but I also get from Ray Allen’s point of view. While I was just as pissed when Allen left the Celtics to go to the rival Miami Heat, I understood it. Like Pierce said, Allen was dealing with some injuries and second year man Avery Bradley took over for him in the starting lineup. With someone as accomplished as Allen, I see why he thought he was being disrespected. Not to mention that he had well known falling out with Rondo. And in a perfect Segway, Allen posted this on his Facebook the other morning following the Area 21 show.
Hmmmmmmmmm, interesting. While it’s fun to watch, the whole situation is sad. I love Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett but I also love Ray Allen. Hell, I even wrote an article here on Ray Allen’s career. So it’s just sad to see that time hasn’t healed old wounds because Ray Allen was just as important to that championship team as Pierce and Garnett. There’s nothing I would love more than to see those 3 legends stand together smiling, but as we saw last night, they’ve got a long way to go.
If you want another angle on this, my fellow writer Connor Strayer wrote a piece on this too. And to end this on the positive note, the fact that Doc Rivers’ retirement gift for Paul Pierce was a wheel chair is hilarious.
Written By: Steven Santoro (SVS_1993)
