Ray Allen

Walter Ray Allen Jr., known to basketball fans simply as Ray Allen, has died at the age of 51. He was one of the most accomplished shooters in the history of the National Basketball Association and a player whose career spanned 18 seasons with five different franchises.

Born on July 20, 1975 at Castle Air Force Base near Merced, California, Allen grew up in a military family that moved frequently before settling in Dalzell, South Carolina, where he starred at Hillcrest High School. He played three seasons at the University of Connecticut before entering the 1996 NBA draft, where he was selected fifth overall by the Minnesota Timberwolves and immediately traded to the Milwaukee Bucks. Over the following two decades he built a reputation as one of the purest and most disciplined jump shooters the game has produced, a skill he attributed in part to a lifelong, mild case of obsessive compulsive disorder that shaped his repetitive, meticulous practice habits.

Allen starred for the Bucks and the Seattle SuperSonics before being traded to the Boston Celtics in 2007, where he joined Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to form a championship core that won the NBA title in 2008. He later played for the Miami Heat, where his most famous moment came in Game 6 of the 2013 NBA Finals: with Miami trailing San Antonio and seconds remaining, Allen stepped behind the three point line and sank a shot that forced overtime, a play widely regarded as one of the most important and memorable in league history. The Heat went on to win that series, giving Allen his second championship. He retired in November 2016 as the NBA's all time leader in three pointers made, a record later broken by Stephen Curry, and he still ranks among the top three shooters in league history. He was a ten time All Star, an Olympic gold medalist with the 2000 United States team, a 2018 inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and a member of the NBA's 75th Anniversary Team.

Beyond basketball, Allen built a notable acting career, most memorably playing basketball prodigy Jesus Shuttlesworth opposite Denzel Washington in Spike Lee's 1998 film He Got Game, a role that gave him his enduring nickname. He later served as a coach at Gulliver Preparatory School, wrote a memoir, and spoke publicly about causes including Holocaust remembrance, having served on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

Allen died on October 29, 2026. Details surrounding the circumstances of his death, including the cause and location, have not yet been made public, and this page will be updated as confirmed information becomes available. Tributes from former teammates, coaches and the wider basketball community are expected in the hours and days following the news, reflecting the esteem in which he was held both as a player and as a person.