The Sonics' Ray Allen: Developing a shooter's touch

LOS ANGELES — He took one look at the skinny kid, the one with the mid-thigh shorts and white socks pulled up to his knees, and the words "NBA player" never came to mind.

Not for this one. Not for Walter Ray Allen.

Jeff Lensch had seen hundreds of young boys spill in and out of the Edwards Youth Center on the Air Force base near Rosamond, Calif.

As head of the boys basketball program, he had developed a knack for spotting the few of kids who might perform well at the high-school level and maybe, just maybe, eke out a scholarship to a small-time college.

John Allen, Ray's older brother ... now that kid had talent, Lensch remembers 16 years later. He was the athlete in the Allen family.

And Ray? "I thought he would do something with his mind," Lensch said. "A leadership position. An executive. Definitely business oriented. He was quiet. But what he had was, you tell him to do something and that's what he did."

Lensch didn't put much stock in Allen's NBA future in large part because his shot was awful. He chuckles when retelling the stories.

It's difficult to believe that Allen, who is playing in his fourth NBA All-Star Game today in Los Angeles (5 p.m., TNT), had been the worst shooter on his junior-high team. His year under the tutelage of Lensch laid the foundation that not only led Allen to the NBA but allowed him to become one of the great shooters of his generation.

"Horrible," Lensch says when thinking of Allen's shot back then. "But then, we all have to start from somewhere. That whole idea of natural ability, hmmmph. You work at it. You get better. And I'm telling you, Ray had a lot of work to do."

The art of Ray Allen's jumpshot In his words, Ray Allen tells us about his jumpshot.

Lensch produces a videotape and pops the cassette into a recorder. The images are a little grainy, but there's no mistaking little Ray Allen, or that everything Lensch said is true.

Back then, Allen, a 12-year-old seventh-grader, used a two-hand push shot that he launched from just beneath his chin. He had a skipping motion to his delivery and his arms would flail all over on his follow-through.

Lensch would videotape his players shooting free throws and use the footage as a teaching device. He sat with them in front of the television and pointed out their flaws.

As a fifth- and sixth-grader, Allen was too young to compete on the teams that Lensch coached. But when he entered junior high, the two spent two hours a day, five days a week on the court from November to February.

As a sophomore growing up in Illinois, Lensch took the coaching reigns of his high-school team. He read every book he could find, attended coaching camps and talked to the men who played the game.

His motto: "If you can make a free throw, you can make a jumper." And his instructions were simple:

Be ready to shoot.

Point your toes at the basket.

Bend your knees.

Place one hand beneath the ball, the other on the side.

Keep your elbows in.

Focus on the rim.

Shoot and swing your arms through the stroke and drop them at your side.

Allen soaked it all in. Each day he would practice the jump shot that would make him millions. He had Lensch continue his critique.

They only bickered once, Lensch says. Allen had a habit of pointing his right elbow out.

"After practice, he would stay a half-hour to 45 minutes every day and work on it," Lensch says. "I don't know if we were ever able to get his elbow in. We tried everything. But whatever I said or didn't say, it worked out for Ray."

In a year's time, Allen found the shot he felt comfortable with and it would never change again.

He left Edwards Air Force Base shortly after his basketball discovery because his father, a career mechanic in the Air Force, continued a series of moves that included stops in Merced, Calif.; Ramstein, Germany; Altus, Okla.; Suffolk, England; back to California to Rosamond, then to rural Dalzell, S.C., where Allen graduated from Hillcrest High.

Ask Allen where his home is and you may get the answer he gave Sonics teammate Antonio Daniels a few weeks ago.

"I really don't know where Ray is from," Daniels says. "He'll rattle off three or four places then we're like, 'Man, do you have a home?' "

But ask Allen where he discovered his game and he is quick to answer.

"My last year in California at this youth center," he says. "My coach that coached me in my first organized league at the youth center. Jeff Lensch. I always tell him, he and those guys there were one of the main reasons why I was successful because they gave me a fundamental foundation. And I haven't changed since."

James Smith, Allen's coach at Hillcrest, tried to get his young star to change the point of origin of his shot, Allen remembers.

By then, he had blossomed into a proven scorer. Still, his high-school coaches felt his release was too low and they wanted him to put more arc on his shot.

"I just said 'nope, I'm not doing it,' which kind of caught him by surprise because here's this little kid telling him he's not going to do something that the coach said," Allen says. "But by the time I got to high school, I wasn't going to change a whole lot. It's funny, but I knew who I was and what I felt comfortable doing."

Perhaps sensing the stubbornness in Allen, Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun never asked the third-leading scorer in UConn history to adapt his shot.

"I had too much sense for that," Calhoun says. "Any way he wanted to shoot it was fine by me. I could live with the results."

Chris Ford, Allen's first NBA coach at Milwaukee, remembers working with Allen on offense.

"He is fluid, almost flawless," says Ford, who coached in Boston when Larry Bird played for the Celtics. "I've been around some fine shooters, some of the greatest in the game, and if he keeps going like he has (been), he'll be right with them someday."

Even the best shooters are expected to accept coaching at the NBA level, says Hersey Hawkins, who is fifth on the Sonics' three-point list. When Hawkins played in Philadelphia, he had to fend off attempts to modify his shot. After repeated requests, he gave in.

"You have to fight it off on occasion," says Hawkins, a television analyst for the Memphis Grizzlies. "Every team has a shooting coach and people wanting you to change. If I'm a shooting coach I would never talk to Ray. Would never say a word to him unless he came to me."

Since Lensch's early instructions, only Karl Hobbs, now the coach at George Washington, got Allen to alter his shot.

"He made sure I had a work ethic when it came to shooting," Allen says. "Being in position, being ready to shoot. A lot of guys in the NBA aren't in position to shoot. They probably had a good shot, but their body wasn't right."

Allen studied the best shooters of his time. He admired marksmen like Steve Kerr, Craig Hodges and John Paxson.

"Those guys were all great," Allen says. "They always had their shot ready. Regardless of who had the ball, they were always standing there ready, and waiting on that three-point line. That's half of shooting."

The great shooters have left the game, Allen says. When asked his favorites among current players, he lists Peja Stojakovic and Dirk Nowitzki.

"Peja is the guy that I would have to say he's the one that is most efficient getting his shot off with minimum body movement," Allen says. "Dirk always seems like he's just standing there. He's 7 feet tall and he has so much leverage. But those two are about it. We don't have a lot of great shooters in this league."

Since the Los Angeles Lakers set the NBA field-goal percentage record of 54.5 during the 1984-85 season, shooting has fallen dramatically. Last season, Utah was the best shooting team in the league, at 46.8 percent.

"A lot of it had to do with how we now show the game to the kids in video games and highlight films," Magic Johnson says. "They only see dunks and crossover dribbles, and now that's all they want to do.

"We don't have that many shooters anymore, and most of the shooters that we have, outside of Ray, they're foreigners. And it's hurt the game a lot."

There are many theories as to why shooting percentages have dipped, ranging from high schools not teaching proper fundamental skills to the constant lure of the three-point line.

Technique is hardly discussed.

"Everybody shoots it differently," Hawkins says. "Everybody has their own little style. But you have to have the confidence to be able to take the shot and be willing to accept the consequence if you miss the shot. A lot of guys struggle with confidence.

"There are some guys with real ugly shots. You take Reggie Miller and compare him with, let's say Dale Ellis, the thing they have in common is their confidence. They never doubt if it's going to go in."

On most nights, Allen feels that way, which may explain his .882 career free-throw percentage, among the top 10 in NBA history.

There have been a few nights in his career when he felt every shot that left his hands would find its way through the rim.

It was that way in the final moments of the 1996 Big East tournament championship game in New York, when he sank the winning shot in a 75-74 victory over Georgetown.

"That was the best feeling I've ever had in basketball," he said at the time. "Hitting the game-winning shot in the Garden is something that probably every kid dreams about."

A few years later in 2001, he made 33 of 50 attempts to win the three-point shootout at All-Star Weekend and best Stojakovic.

The next season, he connected on 10 of 14 three-pointers during a game against Charlotte, scoring a career-high 47.

According to Allen, it was his third-best game as a pro, ranking behind the night last month he scored 42 during a 119-108 overtime victory against Portland at KeyArena, and the last-minute duel he had with Kobe Bryant during a 111-109 victory against the Lakers, in which Allen hit the winning basket.

"He might be the ultimate shooter we've got going today," says Sam Cassell, Allen's former teammate in Milwaukee. "He's just ridiculous. Great shooter off the dribble. He makes tough shots. Floaters. He makes the toughest shots and makes it look so easy. He's got a jump shot. Other guys set themselves up. Ray jumps high, and in midair, he's able to adjust."

Allen has a theory for this. He relies heavily on his ability to evaluate every shot.

"You take batting practice, you go to the golf range and you come out and shoot your jump shot," he says. "It's all the same. You work on your release. You have checks. Are my legs in it? How's my release going? And then you gauge where it hits on the rim to determine how you're missing, if you're missing. If something goes wrong, you got to know whatever it is and where it is.

"You've got to train yourself in all different types of situations. Just like on the golf course. You've got to hit drives, 7-irons, sand shots, your putter. You've got to train everywhere on this floor because you're not going to have that same jump shot every time."

Every so often, either through injury or a lack of concentration, Allen will develop what he calls a hiccup in his mechanics.

It happened last week, when a left-shoulder injury altered his rhythm and prevented him from following through on the delivery. Despite the pain shooting along his collarbone, Allen made 8 of 17 shots for 22 points against Portland.

At these times, he remembers his old coach, Jeff Lensch, and his advice.

"What Jeff would say more than anything else is just make each shot look like the one before it," Allen says. "Through repetition, you can work the kinks out.

"Every time I've had a problem, that's what I fall back on. What he taught me way back then has stayed with me."

Percy Allen: 206-464-2278 or pallen@seattletimes.com