Report: Blazers reached out to Ray Allen to play this season after Matthews’ injury
(AP Photo/Greg Wahl-Stephens)
Following the devastating season-ending injury to starting shooting guard Wesley Matthews, the Blazers had a huge hole that needs to be filled.
According to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, the Blazers tried to help fill that void with free agent shooting guard and two-time champion Ray Allen.
In the wake of Wesley Matthews tearing his Achilles’ tendon on Thursday night, Blazers general manager Neil Olshey made a call to agent Jim Tanner on Friday morning on the chance that Allen might reconsider his decision to sit out the 2014-15 season, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
Nevertheless, Tanner informed the Blazers that Allen, 39, remains intent on sitting out the season and wouldn’t consider the possibility of joining Portland – or any other team, sources told Yahoo Sports.
Allen is the most prolific three-point shooter in league history, but it’s possible that he’ll never play again.
Allen announced earlier this week that he would sit out the rest of the season and would not comeback to join a team for playoff run. Allen has reportedly been in Miami throughout the season working out, but at 39, he may never play another NBA minute.
The situation that Portland currently finds itself in would be one of the better ones for Allen in terms of having a role and playing. Arron Afflalo is expected to start in Matthews’ place but behind him there are a group of young players with one or multiple needing to step up their play. CJ McCollum will be expected to see an increase in minutes as well as Alonzo Gee. And Allen Crabbe will at least be on the active list, so who knows what we will see from him.
Dorell Wright has seen the majority of his minutes at the power forward position this season but with the injuries to everybody, perhaps we will see more of him at small forward. And depending on the match-ups we will also likely see more of the Blake-Lillard line-ups.
The Blazers offense was over five points per 100 possessions better when Matthews was on the court.
They’ll need to find more than one way to make up for the loss of Matthews and it looks like none of those ways will involve Ray Allen.
Erik Gundersen
Erik Gundersen is the Trail Blazers beat reporter for The Columbian. He's a graduate of the Allen School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon in addition earning a degree in Spanish. He's covered the NBA for four seasons. You can also occasionally find his work on ESPN.com's NBA section for their TrueCities series. He also fist-bumped with Kanye West once. Follow @BlazerBanter on twitter for more Blazers and NBA news.