Milwaukee Bucks: Ray Allen’s greatest moments as a Buck

Ray’s rack attack over T-Mac

Moving back to his play on the court, one of the more iconic plays Allen made throughout his playing career occurred during the Bucks’ first round playoff series against the Orlando Magic back in the 2000-01 season.

Of course, that year served as the height of the “Big 3” era where Allen, along with Sam Cassell and Glenn Robinson, led the Bucks to 52 wins, which currently stands as the last Bucks team to reach the 50-win milestone. Entering the 2001 NBA Playoffs as the second seed in the East, their first round challengers were a Tracy McGrady-led Orlando Magic.

After taking care of business when hosting the Magic for Games 1 and 2 in front of the Bucks faithful inside the Bradley Center, despite McGrady’s do-it-all heroics, Milwaukee looked to make a clean sweep of the seventh-seeded Magic for Game 3 in Orlando as first round series operated under the best-of-five format back then.

That proved to be more difficult than the first pair of tilts as the Magic swung the game in their favor throughout the second half of Game 3 and led by as much as 14 points near the 5-minute mark of the fourth quarter.

Having been put back on their heels, the Bucks sprung back to life seconds later to rally back from their deficit and set up a nail-biting finish in the final couple of minutes in regulation. After breaking through to go up 108-107 with 15.2 seconds left, McGrady answered by putting home a tough and-one finish with 8.9 left to go.

Following a timeout, then-Bucks head coach George Karl entrusted Allen to counter McGrady’s score in hopes of sending the game into overtime, at the very minimum.

Allen delivered in remarkable fashion as he received the inbounds pass not far from the center of the court by the half court line and promptly drove down the lane to rise up and throw down a pulverizing slam over McGrady to even the game up at 110 with 3.5 ticks to go.

Although the Bucks lost the battle that was Game 3, they ended up winning the war by beating the Magic 112-104 in Game 4 to advance to the Eastern Conference Semifinals.