Ray Allen didn't feel valued on Kentucky visit: "Connecticut was the place for me"

Jesus Shuttlesworth once considered taking his talents to Kentucky to play for Rick Pitino. The NBA shooting legend was intrigued with the idea of suiting up for a blue blood, being part of “the show” in Lexington.

The Wildcats were coming off a Final Four run in 1993 and Ray Allen — a future 10-time NBA All-Star and Hall of Famer — saw a fit. He first visited Alabama and was pressured to commit, but later decided to part ways with the program. Then came a visit to Connecticut, a wildly successful trip that left Allen feeling right at home. But was it just recency bias? Would he fall in love with every school he saw in person?

He scheduled one final visit to Kentucky to figure that out — a trip that certainly provided the clarity he was looking for. It just didn’t favor the Wildcats.

Why? As Allen tells it, Rick Pitino wouldn’t even talk to him on his visit to Lexington.

Kentucky legend Jamal Mashburn took Allen and his roommate Doron Sheffer — a standout international prospect in his own right — out to lunch, where Pitino was sitting just a few tables away. The former UK coach — who owned the restaurant — didn’t say a word to the prized recruits. Unfortunately, the future Hall of Famer noticed, and it pushed him to the school that made him feel at home, UConn.

“[Coach Pitino] happened to be there that afternoon, sitting with some friends a few tables away,” Allen wrote In his autobiography From the Outside: My Journey Through Life and the Game I Love. “Perfect, I figured, he’ll stop by for a few minutes to say hello, and I’ll learn more to help me make my decision. Only he didn’t stop by. He waved, and that was it. Coach [Jim] Calhoun would never have ignored us. He and I, in fact, enjoyed several meals together on my visit to Storrs.”

Those were Allen’s final three recruiting options: Alabama, UConn and Kentucky. The first pressured him to commit, telling him a future in Tuscaloosa was best for his future. The third had the glitz and glamour, but he didn’t feel the personal connection. That led him to option two, a program in UConn and coach in Calhoun that made him feel valued.

It was a decision process that helped him grow as a person, changing from boy to man, he says. Ironic now that he’s a high school basketball coach at Gulliver Prep in Miami and will have to help other teenagers make similar decisions moving forward.

“There’s a bit of irony now that it’s now coming full circle, but so difficult when you’re 17 years old and you have to make a decision to go to college,” Allen told KSR at the Hoophall Classic in Springfield, Mass. “And a lot of times people make that decision for the moment, for the next year. And in many cases, making a decision for that moment or that year is always a bad decision because you’ve got to think about how you want to set yourself up for your life. You can’t make a decision for a girlfriend or for weather or for proximity to home or to a friend. You’ve got to make it for what is going to help make you who you need to be successful, whether it’s a business or sports.”

The NBA legend, who racked up 24,505 points in his historic professional career, shed light on his mindset through that high school decision with KSR. He admits Kentucky was a major draw and his excitement leading up to the visit for Midnight Madness had him believing a future in Lexington was very much on the table.

“That was the case coming up, and at 17, Kentucky was the show. And they still are,” Allen told KSR. “They’ve been notoriously a great college program and they get some of the best players in the country coming out of high school, so I was excited to go there for Midnight Madness.”

The visit didn’t go as planned, obviously, at least in terms of what he was looking for. Same can be said about Alabama, a fun trip overall, but one that left him wondering if the Tide truly had his best interests in mind. He ultimately decided they didn’t.

That led him to Calhoun and the Huskies.

“I made a faux pas as a kid and committed to Alabama. That was my first visit and I got talked into it, I didn’t know any better,” Allen told KSR. “Then I got talked out of it, they said to take my remaining visits. So I followed up on my UConn visit, and when I left there, I was excited because I said, ‘Man, this was just as fun or even more fun.’ And I was like, ‘Is every new visit I go on going to be just the same?’ So I had to take Kentucky. I had five visits, but I cut it to three just so I could be smart about making a decision, because I had three pretty good schools.

“Once I went to Kentucky, I realized that Connecticut was the place for me. Just everything at the time — and it might be different today if I made a decision, you never know.”

What was it about Storrs that made him feel at home? It started from the moment he arrived, a detailed itinerary that clearly expressed how important Allen was to the Huskies. He wanted to feel wanted, and Calhoun did that at UConn.

“There is something to be said about going to a place where you’re wanted,” he told KSR. “Coach (Jim) Calhoun, from the minute I landed I had an itinerary. I actually have a book still that kind of talks about my itinerary. When I get picked up, my schedule, whose class I’m going to, who’s in the class, who’s taking me from there. There wasn’t a stone left unturned and that showed me that I was valued here. In that value I was going to be curated to become better, you know? They’re going to stay on me.”

It wasn’t about promises of playing time or shots, the opportunity to become a star. Calhoun just laid out a path to success Allen felt most comfortable taking. When it came time for a decision, the choice was clear.

“He never promised me anything,” Allen told KSR. “He didn’t tell me he’s gonna make me an NBA player. He said if I work hard, I’m going to come in and have an opportunity to get better and to grow. And if I have dreams or aspirations of going to the next level, then I’ve got to stay focused and ready and willing to put the work in and he was right.”

He used that mindset to become arguably the greatest pure shooter to ever touch a basketball, knocking down 2,973 3-pointers over the course of his historic NBA career. Now, he’s looking to pass that mindset on to the next generation of basketball talent as a coach.

“It’s so difficult to try to push that idea, that narrative into them and get them to understand, you know what it’s like,” Allen said. “Everybody now is talking about offers, about rankings. All the kids are talking about social media presence and highlights. Everybody you see has a great highlight page. You see the highlights and they look like All-Americans. Rankings are great, but most kids that are ranked high, they think they’ve already arrived so they don’t have to work any harder. They post a dunk and think all of a sudden they’re going to get drafted and that’s not how it works. So every day we’re in the gym, I’m just always trying to just re-instill in them to keep working on your skills.”

Allen spent hundreds of thousands of hours working on his craft over the years, day after day in the gym to earn Hall of Fame status. He’s living proof that becoming special takes work. That’s what it takes.

“You look at my career and in most situations at the end of games, I had the ball in my hands, regardless of who I played with. Because I was always the best free-throw shooter and the best three-point shooter on the team,” he said. “So I’m trying to get them to understand that, get in the gym and be obsessive about the work about the preparation and about getting those game shots. I’m trying to get them to understand that commitment is difficult. …

“Guys aren’t doing the special stuff to be special. What you’re doing is average stuff, which every other player is doing. To be special, you have to do special things.”

Allen was this close to taking that “special stuff” with him to Kentucky.