“Slam Magazine said I was likeliest to fade into obscurity”: Ray Allen explains why he didn’t do interviews with Slam after their article on the 1996 NBA Draft class

Ray Allen talked about taking Slam Magazine’s projection for his future personally on the Knuckleheads Podcast with Q & Q&D recently.

Most young basketball fans only remember the first Jordan Brand athlete as a sharpshooter. But when Ray Allen was at his prime, he was one of the most complete guards in the NBA.

This man could shoot you out of the game from anywhere – mid-range or 3-pointers. He could take his defenders off the dribble, and he was a capable playmaker. Allen may have the NBA record for most 3-pointers made, but you shouldn’t ever mistake him for a specialist.

The 10-time NBA All-Star was not, however, highly recruited coming out of college. He was selected 5th overall by the Timberwolves in 1996 as a player ready to contribute, but not necessarily as someone with an All-Star ceiling.

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Ray Allen explains why he didn’t do interviews with Slam after their article on the 1996 NBA Draft class

Allen felt slighted by this approach taken by NBA media. He had no qualms getting into how Slam Magazine, in particular, released a rather demeaning projection of his career:

“I wrote it in my book 3 years ago called ‘From the Outside’. And I always say this, you know, on the cover of Slam magazine, they had the accolades of ‘Most likely to win MVP’, win championships. And my name was nowhere, but one spot.”

“It said ‘Most likely to fade into obscurity’. Me being a well-read young man, I was like ‘I think I know what obscurity means. But let me just look. I need to be sure.'”

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“And for the first 4-5 years of my career, I didn’t want to do any interviews with Slam. Because it pis*ed me off so much that y’all just kinda wrote me off. Like all this that you could’ve said, but you said this?”

“But truth be told, after that, I realized that that’s what we need. That’s what I needed at the time. Because you get comfortable and think that you’ve made and things are going to be easy from here on out, that’s when you slip.”