As the Celtics kick off their campaign for an NBA championship tonight in the opening round of the playoffs against the Atlanta Hawks, Allen will leave nothing to chance. He will line up for the tip exactly as he has for his other 73 games. His pregame ritual does not waver: a nap from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m., a meal of chicken and white rice at 2:30, an arrival time at the gym at precisely 3:45 to stretch. Allen will shave his head, then walk out to the court at exactly 4:30. He will methodically take shots from both baselines, both elbows, and the top of the key.
Allen is second all-time in 3-pointers, 460 shy of Reggie Miller. He has a chance of surpassing Miller, provided he stays healthy, but if he does, it will not be by divine intervention. It will be the result of years of painstaking preparation.
It will also be the byproduct of learning to strike a delicate balance between routine and superstition.
When Allen was small, he recited a familiar rhyme: Step on a crack, break your mother's back. So what happened if you stumbled onto the line? You'd groan, lament your misfortune, then go home for supper.
Not Ray. He would retreat to his room and wait for the sky to fall.
"I had a borderline case of OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder]," Allen explains. "I was never diagnosed, but it was something I was aware of."
This is how Ray Allen's mind works. If there is a speck of paper on the floor in his house, he cannot walk by without picking it up. He has tried. He has purposely marched up the stairs without correcting the glaring imperfection, but he's unable to eliminate the image from his mind until he goes back down, throws the scrap in the wastebasket, and restores order in his home.
He requires the same symmetry in his basketball universe. That's why, when Paul Pierce suddenly began doing 360 dunks in warm-ups earlier this season, Allen demanded an explanation.
"We were winning," Allen says. "Why would he change it up when we were winning?"
"I was just trying something new," Pierce says. "I missed the shot. So Ray tells me I have to miss it the rest of the year?"
Communicate, compromise
There was considerable discussion before the season on how Pierce, Allen, and Kevin Garnett would share shots.
