A Farewell To the Man Called TA
Posted by Zach Lowe on Jul 14, 2010
Shortly before one of the Finals games in Boston, I got a call from Brian Robb, who had just come out of the pre-game locker room as part of his coverage of the series for CelticsHub. Brian had a message: Tony Allen was looking for me. He was approaching media people he didn’t recognize and grabbing their press passes to see if they were me. Brian asked TA why he was looking for me. TA wouldn’t say, but he did not look happy.
Someone had obviously shown him something I had written, and I’ve certainly made my share of shooting-fish-in-a-barrel TA jokes. I welcomed his return to the line-up last season by publishing an Official Tony Allen Dos and Don’ts List (sample: “Don’t drive to the basket if doing so involves beating more than one defender”), an admittedly obvious punch line of a post. In an Eastern Conference Finals live blog for the Wall Street Journal, I wondered whether the Mickael Pietrus-Tony Allen match-up had the highest potential for dumb decisions of any one-on-one match-up in the league.
But here’s the thing: I actually like Tony Allen.
As a fan, I gravitate toward athletes who exhibit frailty. The supermen—the guys who come through in the clutch and never show fear—are like a different species. I don’t understand them. They’re amazing to watch and wonderful to have on your favorite team, but I can’t relate to them.
On the other hand: It made me like Chris Webber more when he became visibly terrified toward the end of Game 7 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals and refused to even look at the rim. I found it endearing that Pedro Martinez was so bratty that he responded to a Yankee post-season beating by getting frustrated and throwing the ball at Jorge Posada’s head. I thought it was sort of cool that Donovan McNabb puked with the Super Bowl on the line.
TA had this sort of human quality. He made the same mistakes over and over, even though he knew very well that he was doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. Even in the 2010 playoffs—perhaps his finest stretch—he committed a few of his patented charging fouls after ill-advised 1-on-3 drives. We all have that friend who jumps from one bad relationship to another even though part of them realizes what they are doing as it happens. TA was a basketball version of that friend. It’s temptation, baby. TA just couldn’t resist a tight lane to the hoop when a simpler play would do.
And he knew it, and nobody took it harder than him. No player has a more immediate or exaggerated “my bad” reaction than TA. When he dribbles the ball off his foot or commits a dumb offensive foul, he raises his hand to take the blame or even slaps his head to punish himself. He often shakes his head and talks to himself as he retreats on defense, disbelieving that he has just done the same damn thing again. Some guys are too cool to admit they’ve done something wrong or that they’re frustrated, even embarassed. They point the finger at someone else or they smirk, pretending they don’t care.
TA cares, and he tries. He feels horribly every time he messes up, and I love that about him.
But all that caring didn’t lead to much improvement. He still can’t shoot jump shots, his turnover rate is still too high, and the team’s offense performed significantly worse with TA on the court in each of the last three seasons, according to 82games. That’s not to say he didn’t improve at all, because he did, especially in 2010. He cut his turnover rate by a tiny margin, and he took fewer jumpers as a percentage of his overall shot attempts than ever before in his career. There is a lot to be said for realizing your limitations, and TA in 2010 realized he’s not a jump-shooter.
Best of all, he stopped biting on pump fakes during the playoffs. The C’s could sic him on Dwyane Wade and Kobe Bryant and feel confident he wouldn’t give them free points by taking their pump-fake bait. That was not a small thing, and it goes a long way toward explaining why the C’s defense was so much stingier with TA on the floor. Of course, when people asked TA during the playoffs why he was getting better, he explained that he was just listening to Tom Thibodeau, as if listening to the coach was a novel idea that had just dawned him—during his sixth season.
The team will miss TA’s defense, and the higher-ups know it. But they also know that the team’s offense almost always suffered with Allen on the court, particularly when they paired him with Rajon Rondo. It’s hard to beat good defensive teams—and teams that don’t allow transition buckets by coughing the ball up—when both your guards are non-threatening from 12 feet and out. Even lazing through the regular season, the C’s maintained a top-5 defense with Tony Allen playing only 20 percent of available minutes, according to 82games. And even turning things on in the playoffs, Boston’s offense was league-average. The C’s can be a top-flight defense without TA, but he would hold the team back from its goal of nudging its offense back into the top 10.
Tony Allen is out of Boston because Danny Ainge and the front office understand exactly what Tony Allen is. In a league that pays for potential (see Amir Johnson, Wes Matthews), TA can’t even bank $3.5 million a season because he’s a known commodity. He can help a lot on defense, but he’s going to hurt you on offense unless you can surround him with shooters and force a ton of turnovers while he’s on the floor. The Celtics almost lost the Bulls series in 2009 in part because Doc Rivers insisted on playing Tony Allen when the Bulls went small, and the C’s could not score with TA and Rondo together on the floor. With the Bulls down by five late in Game 6 and facing elimination, Chicago dared TA to shoot, and he obliged by bricking two close shots taken with the lack of conviction a lot of non-shooters feel in such situations.
You can’t count on TA to shake Boston out of the long offensive droughts that paralyze the C’s, and so he remained on the bench in Game 7 and is now out of Boston.
There hasn’t been a more maddening Celtic in the last 20 years, save perhaps Antoine Walker. But TA tried so hard, and the things that made him maddening also made him an endearing character. He was a daily reminder that it’s tough to break habits, and that professional basketball is a hard, hard game. Some guys never learn how to hit a decent percentage of their jumpers in game conditions, no matter how many they take in practice. It takes years for some players to improve their handle, and some never do.
Maybe TA will surprise the Grizzlies and evolve as an offensive player as he approaches 30. He probably won’t. But he’ll try damn hard, and he’ll help Memphis on defense and give them true NBA-quality depth. There is value in that.
Farewell, TA. You can rest assured Boston fans will never forget you.
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