By Garrett Cote
@garrett_cote
When Ray Allen was offered the head coaching position at Gulliver Prep in Miami-Dade County, Florida, during the summer of 2021, he was tasked with making the transition from an 18-year Hall of Fame career – playing basketball in its highest form – to coaching high school kids.
Allen, 47, was coached by some of the game’s greatest minds and characters over the course of his basketball life, including George Karl, Doc Rivers and Erik Spoelstra. Every coach Allen ever had made an impact on how he perceived the game, but one coach, in particular, stood apart from the rest.
When Allen committed to the University of Connecticut out of high school, he knew he was in for an awakening. UConn was led by the legendary Jim Calhoun, a towering and often intimidating figure, so Allen had his work cut out for him.
He soon realized that, while Calhoun might have been tough to play for, he never asked players to do anything he didn’t think they were capable of doing.
“I didn’t have any issues with him because I understood what he wanted,” Allen said. “What he asked of me and all of us wasn’t unfair. It was demanding because he believed we could be better than who we were before we came to him. If you don’t want to get better, if you don’t want to listen, if you don’t want to be coached, then it is demanding. That’s the difficult part for some players.”
How Calhoun handled the different personalities of each player stood out to Allen. So as he accepted the job at Gulliver Prep, Allen remembered Calhoun’s technique and immediately implemented it in his own way.
“(Calhoun) took what he saw in each individual. Some guys he had to yell at, some he didn’t, because he knew each person was a different personality,” Allen said. “That’s what coaching, I’ve learned, is. You can’t cast a wide net over everybody and think that everybody is going to learn the same. You have to customize your teaching to each person because everybody grows up differently and comes from different backgrounds.”
Like many professional basketball players, Allen couldn’t stay away from the game following his official retirement in 2016. There was no doubt Allen was going to coach at some point – it was just a matter of when and where. Once he learned of the vacancy at Gulliver Prep, Allen sensed it was the perfect fit for more than one reason.
Allen deeply embraces coaching high school hoops, as it gives him the opportunity to mold teenage kids into young men. In addition, Walter “Ray” Allen III, Allen’s oldest son, attends Gulliver Prep and is a senior this season, providing Allen the chance to coach his firstborn as he wraps up his high school career.
The father-son and player-coach dynamic – and finding the line in between – can be tricky to navigate, but Allen has established an easy solution.
He has 17 players on his roster. One of them happens to be his son, but he treats them all the same.
“I couldn’t be anywhere else in the world than to be with my son for his last year [of high school],” Allen said. “I’m not biased at all when I’m coaching him, because I look at him as one of my players. There are times when, after the game, I can be Dad, and I can be proud of him. As he’s on the floor, I’m just trying to pour into him to get him to work on his game. My sole intention and purpose is to help him get better at basketball.”
It would be understandable for a guy like Allen, who is considered an all-time great, to want his first son to follow in his footsteps. Instead, he vows to let Allen III blaze his own trail, but best believe he’s going to be there supporting him every step of the way.
“There’s nothing that I would [want other] than to see him successful and him happy, and being where he wants to be in his life,” Allen said of his son. “We had this conversation maybe three years ago, and I asked him what he wanted. I said, ‘Cool, I’ll be with you every step of the way.’ And then the universe has a way of making it happen, because the [Gulliver Prep] job opened up. It put me right here where I can help him achieve his goals so he can get to his lot in life, whatever that may be, so he can be successful and proud of himself.”
Playing for an NBA champion and Hall of Famer as a high schooler comes with a flurry of emotions. It can’t be easy playing for someone that’s been an idol – an inspiration – to many young hoopers across the globe.
Recognizing that, Allen implores his players to strive to be better than he was, to use his career as motivation for what’s possible if they put in the work.
“I always tell my players, and I don’t mean it in an offensive way, ‘You guys can’t be me, you can’t be like me. You need to be better than me,’” Allen said. “‘You have the example that I provide for you, so you get to study what I’ve done and you get to be better than that.’ They have to take what I’ve done to be able to build off of it.”
Basketball is a game that Ray Allen made sacrifices for. He took a chance, he bet on himself, and because of those sacrifices, the game gave him so much in return.
Now, after two NBA championships, 10 All-Star appearances, two All-NBA selections, knocking down the second most 3-pointers in a career in league history and being voted to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team, Allen strives to give everything back to the game by teaching, inspiring and guiding young high school kids to be the best versions of themselves on and off the basketball court.
Photo: Miami Herald