Allan Houston to announce retirement

[Kori Ellis]

Allan Houston to announce retirement Monday

ESPN.com news services

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2194071


Two-time All-Star Allan Houston is to announce his retirement from the Knicks at an afternoon news conference Monday.

Houston, who appeared in just 70 games over the past two seasons due to chronic knee pain, wanted to test his knee in training camp this year before deciding whether to retire. The shooting guard wasn't participating in the full workload of two-a-days his teammates were running, but had been encouraged by early results.

Houston, considered the Knicks' best player a few years back, hasn't consistently displayed the smooth shooting stroke that earned him more than $150 million worth of contracts over a 12-year NBA career.

Chronic knee soreness ended Houston's season Jan. 19, causing him to miss New York's final 44 games, and he averaged only 11.9 points while shooting 41 percent from the field -- his lowest numbers since his rookie season of 1993-94.

Houston's last good year came in 2002-03 when he averaged a career-high 22.5 points.

Houston, 34, played the last nine of his 12 seasons in the NBA with the Knicks. He posted a career average of 17.3 points per game, and a career-playoff average of 19.3 points in 63 postseason appearances.

He was to earn $40 million over the final two years of his contract. Houston was the last player remaining from the Knicks' team that reached the NBA Finals in 1999.

[Kori Ellis]

I guess the honor of having "The Allan Houston Rule" named for him (but not used on him) was enough to make him retire.

Good luck Allan.

[ChumpDumper]

Too bad.

But Zeke played his cards right not using the Allan Houston rule on Allan Houston.
He was to earn $40 million over the final two years of his contract.I imagine he'll still get $32 million from insurance.

[angel_luv]

Good luck Allan! = )

[easjer]

Too bad. He was the one Knick I liked. Beautiful shot when he was in shape. Still feel bad for the guy's knee trouble. Good luck to him.

[dknights411]

Wow. I'm actually gonna miss the guy.

[boutons]

I hope stopping playing stops the pain. Good luck.

The 45 pts you dropped on the defense-minded, future-champion Spurs @SBC in March 03 typifies what your talent and career was all about.

[Sense]

Hmm... why did I think Penny would retire before him...

Anyways, he was great.

[Horry For 3!]

That has to suck but I figured he was going to retire soon, his knee just won't let him play. Good luck to him :tu

[samikeyp]

I could see him working in TV or radio. Good luck dude.

[Medvedenko]

Good luck with your millions.....
Seriously, it's too bad that he can't play the game he loves anymore. Do I feel sorry for him...hell no.

[lilmads]

Before I liked the Spurs I was all about the Knicks. Even in 99 I was hoping the Knicks would win. I was basically only a fan of them because of Allan Houston. He was my fav. It sucks that he has knee problems that are causing him to retire. Oh well, that's life. He had a good run for a while though. Good luck to him:)

[Pistons < Spurs]

So sad to see Houston go. I can remember, as a piston fan, watching Houston, Lindasy Hunter, Grant Hill and Theo Ratliff. I really thought that group would play together for years, and truly be something special.

Whats kind of suprising is that of the 4 guys, Hunter has 2 rings, and the rest have 0 Even though Hunter probably has the least true skills of the bunch.

Good Luck Allan

[baseline bum]

It sucks that people will remember him more for his contract than for that amazing playoff run he put together in 1999... especially when he dropped like 33 including a 3 at the shot clock buzzer that ended the Spurs comeback in Game 3 of the Finals.

[2pac]

Anyone else remember SI's article about Hunter and Houston being the Isiah Thomas/Joe Dumars of the future.

Good times.

[boutons]

NYT article:

The New York Times
October 17, 2005
Houston, Knick Star Slowed by Injuries, to Retire
By HOWARD BECK

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/10/17/sports/17hous.jpg

GREENBURGH, N.Y., Oct. 17 - Allan Houston, the sweet-shooting guard who was the last link to the Knicks' Eastern Conference championship team of 1999, has decided to retire.

Houston and the Knicks announced the decision at a news conference this afternoon at the Madison Square Garden training center here. Houston informed his teammates before practice this morning.

"You picture this day for a long time," Houston said in making the announcement. "I didn't know it was going to happen so soon at the time that it did. But you know I did everything I possibly could to get back and to finish my career the way I would have liked to. But my injuries just wouldn't allow me to do it."

Houston, 34, has been plagued by knee injuries for more than two years, and his decision to retire was both unsurprising and inevitable. He played just 20 games last season, and 50 the season before, and although he stubbornly vowed to make a comeback, it had been clear for some time that his career was in its twilight.

In announcing his retirement, Houston thanked God, his family, his coaches, his teammates and the New York fans.

"The fans of New York were unbelievable," he said, adding that he considered the fans to be another family member.

"When you have a family member," he said, "they will support you and love you, but they will also challenge you to be better. And I want to thank them for doing that for me."

Houston was captain of a team that had only four members age 30 or older. "His leadership is definitely going to be missed," said one of his teammates, Penny Hardaway.

Malik Rose, who was with San Antonio in 1999 when the Spurs beat the Knicks in the finals, called Houston "one of the most pure shooters I've ever seen," adding, "Even his misses looked good."

Even as he reiterated his intentions to play again, during an interview in August, Houston admitted that he would have to consider walking away if his body did not respond during training camp.

"I've done it several times," he said of contemplating retirement.

Still, he expressed nothing but optimism, saying he was making steady progress.

"I just don't have it in my mind that I'm not going to be able to come back, honestly," Houston said then.

That changed two weeks ago. A few days into training camp in Charleston, S.C., Houston began feeling pain again in his left knee, and team trainers decided to shut him down. Houston was discouraged but even then vowed that he would persevere and try to return.

Coach Larry Brown praised Houston's professionalism and character and said Houston would have been a vital part of the revamped team.

"I wouldn't have enjoyed watching him play, handicapped as he is," Brown said, referring to Houston's ailments. "As long as it was his decision, I'm OK. I just hope he's around and remains part of this team, because everybody loves him here, everybody respects what he's done, and from my perspective, he can really help me with a lot of these young players."

Houston was selected by the Detroit Pistons in the first round of the 1993 N.B.A. draft and played three seasons with the team. He was signed as a free agent by the Knicks in July 1996, playing nine seasons in New York.

In his 12 N.B.A. seasons, Houston averaged 17.3 points, 2.9 rebounds and 2.4 assists a game. His shooting average was 44 percent from the field and 40 percent from 3-point range.

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[adidas11]

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2194071

That's too bad about Allan Houston. I hate to see a player have his career end prematurely due to injury, when the rest of him (mind and most of his body) were still willing.

I liked his style, his jumpshot, and his demeanour that he brought to the NBA.

[ZStomp]

I guess the honor of having "The Allan Houston Rule" named for him (but not used on him) was enough to make him retire.

Good luck Allan.


:lol

[Cant_Be_Faded]

Sad. To see your dream left unfulfilled.

[spurschick]

Hope he lands a great coaching or broadcasting gig.

[Mr_MVP21]

The guy had talent but the organization was dying to get rid of him since he acquired that contract. Then again, Isiah Thomas just soaks up talent with loaded contracts.

[boutons]

The New York Times
October 18, 2005

With Hopes Cut Off At Knees, Houston Passes Up Last Shot
By HOWARD BECK

GREENBURGH, N.Y., Oct. 17 - Allan Houston carved his place in Knicks lore with clutch jump shots, a dignified public persona and a thoughtful approach that endeared him to teammates and coaches for nearly a decade.

Houston surrendered his No. 20 jersey Monday while displaying most of those traits. If he could have launched a few more timely 3-pointers, he might have done that, too.

But after nearly four seasons of coping with knee injuries, and two seasons of failed comebacks, Houston, 34, at last yielded to his physical limitations, announcing his retirement and cutting the Knicks' last tie to their 1990's glory days.

Houston was the only remaining member of the 1999 Eastern Conference championship team. He was also one of a handful of veterans on an overhauled and youthful roster.

The team could have used his sweet shooting stroke and his leadership, but Houston's chronically arthritic left knee would not permit it. Despite repeated vows to play again, Houston concluded it was time to step aside.

"I always said that I would be back and told the fans that I would be back, and I always truly in my heart believed that," Houston said at a news conference. "But sometimes your will, your passion, your competitiveness, kind of override what your body is going through, and I was strictly running off of those emotions and that will."

The team could have waived Houston in July under an amnesty provision that allowed teams to avoid the N.B.A.'s luxury tax. Depending on how the league rules on Houston's injury, his retirement could save them as much as $72 million but will not provide salary-cap room.

Houston had microfracture surgery on his troublesome right knee in the summer of 2003, after about two seasons of playing in pain. He came back too soon the next season, leading to problems in his left knee, and he played just 70 games over his final two seasons, including 20 last season.

Yet Houston kept working to regain his health and sounded optimistic when training camp opened two weeks ago. The pain in his left knee resurfaced after a few days, however, and Houston - told to shut down activity by team trainers - again contemplated retirement. He said he made the decision last week after many discussions with his wife, Tamara.

He called James L. Dolan, the Madison Square Garden chairman, on Saturday, and talked to Coach Larry Brown after a team shootaround. He delivered the news to his teammates Monday morning.

Houston's departure was not unexpected, but it was treated as a solemn occasion.

"His leadership is definitely going to be missed," said Penny Hardaway, who is one of three Knicks players older than 30. "It's just unfortunate that we're losing him."

Houston joined the Knicks as a free agent in 1996, after three years with the Detroit Pistons. In his prime, he was one of the top scoring guards in the league, averaging at least 18 points in 7 of his 12 seasons. He was an elite 3-point shooter, making 40.2 percent in his career.

"Lethal," Knicks point guard Stephon Marbury said. "One of the best shooters I've ever seen."

Houston's signature moment as a Knick was on May 16, 1999, when he made a game-winning, series-clinching runner with eight-tenths of a second to play to defeat the Miami Heat and push the Knicks into the conference semifinals. A few weeks later, the Knicks were in the finals. They lost to the Spurs in five games.

"He's just one of the most mentally tough players I've ever seen," said forward Malik Rose, who was a member of the Spurs in 1999.

Houston is the fourth-leading scorer in Knicks history, with 11,165 points - ranking behind first-place Patrick Ewing, Walt Frazier and Willis Reed. His 921 3-pointers rank second to John Starks's 982.

As recently as three seasons ago, Houston still ranked among the top guards in the league. He played all 82 games in 2002-3 and averaged a career-high 22.5 points. Then came the knee surgery. In his final game as a Knick, on Jan. 19, Houston scored 12 points in 27 minutes in a 98-81 loss in Toronto.

He said he had hoped for a more fitting end.

"I exhausted everything that I had to do it," Houston said. "And if it had been what was supposed to happen, it would have happened. It just was not supposed to, and I'm comfortable with that."

In recent years, Houston was often viewed as an albatross, a player with declining abilities and a huge contract. His six-year $100 million contract extension, signed in 2001, was widely criticized and contributed to the franchise's salary-cap troubles.

He was booed during introductions at an open practice at Madison Square Garden last year. Houston revealed no ill feelings.

"The fans of New York were unbelievable," Houston said. "I want to thank the fans for not only supporting me, but challenging me."

It was his way to take the high road. Teammates and team officials lauded Houston repeatedly Monday for his high character and class. Two gestures underscored the point. Even after he announced his retirement to the team, he stayed for a film session and gave pointers to his young former teammates. In the afternoon, before attending his news conference, Houston pulled together a number of team officials and asked them to say a prayer for Dolan, who had heart surgery Monday.

"I can't say that I've met a more classy individual in the N.B.A.," said Isiah Thomas, the Knicks' president, who related the story.

"I don't think there's another player who would have done that. We've all been blessed to have known him as a player, and we're all extremely fortunate to know him as a man."

Team officials had long said they would let Houston determine his own timeline for walking away. There were perceptions, however, that they pressured him to retire last season.

"Anyone who suggests that was misinformed," said Bill Strickland, Houston's longtime agent. "I never once got that impression, irrespective of what was printed. But I think Isiah, having played the game, understood how things would evolve eventually. What was important, I think, was that when this moment arrived, everybody was on the same page."

The Knicks are in a full-scale rebuilding mode, and the new faces of the team are almost all 25 and younger - including the rookies Channing Frye, Nate Robinson and David Lee, and young veterans Eddy Curry, Jamal Crawford and Quentin Richardson.

"I thought with this young team he was vital for us," Brown said. But, he noted, "I wouldn't have enjoyed watching him play handicapped as he is."

Houston said he planned to stay involved with the team, and the franchise intends to keep him involved in an as-yet unspecified role.

"I feel like I have a lot of experience to share with them," Houston said. "I still want to be a part of the Knicks."

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[Brutalis]

Houston was one of the few guys I didnt follow much at all. He was good in NBA Jam for sega though.

Houston is obviously a dedicated Knick, and will probably be in the staff somewhere.

[SenorSpur]

Realizing that all NBA player contracts are guaranteed, does anyone know what type of financial relief, if any, the Knicks will have now that Houston retired? He's still owed the 20mil, but does the club have to pay it to him in that two-year period? Can they defer portions of it? Does his salary remain on the books for the duration?

These and other questions to be answered on the next episode of "As the Knicks Turn"

[boutons]

October 18, 2005
Sports of The Times

A Quiet Gunslinger Who Had to Suffer Slings and Arrows
By HARVEY ARATON

Greenburgh, N.Y.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/10/17/sports/18knicks.1841.jpg


THEY are all gone now, everyone Isiah Thomas inherited not yet two years ago when he stepped into the pressure chamber at Madison Square Garden to remake the Knicks. When the inevitable occurred yesterday, when Allan Houston gave up the tortured chase of his career on incurably arthritic knees, there were no Knicks remaining from the Scott Layden years, or the Dave Checketts days. No players who could wax nostalgic about the Ernie Grunfeld-Jeff Van Gundy wars.

No Knicks who ever suited up with old No. 33, who lobbed the ball into the post to Patrick Ewing's hungry hands.

Houston outlasted them all, from Ewing to Oakley, L. J. to Sprewell, and those flawed and flummoxed who followed, in small part because he was the most well-behaved Knick of his era and in large part because he had the most disproportionate of contracts on a team with too many to count.

He re-signed with the Knicks in 2001 for $100 million over six years and was eventually treated as if he had foisted the deal upon himself. By last season, when a gimpy Houston could play in only 20 games, when the Knicks were an eyesore from top to bottom, some fans saw him as a microcosm of their misery, and even an in-season acquisition like Malik Rose had to lament the unfiltered courtside abuse.

"It was tough for me sitting next to him," Rose said before Houston arrived at the Knicks' practice facility to retire his silk-smooth jumper after playing 9 of his 12 N.B.A. seasons in New York. "It was like someone two feet tall, punching you and punching you and saying, 'Hit me back, hit me back.' "

Rose was a rare Knick who could vouch for the fact that Allan Houston, serene as he seemed, once had the goading eyes of a cold-blooded gunslinger. "He was crazy, especially in his scoring area, top of the key, out on the wing," Rose said, recalling how Houston carried the Knicks to their one victory in the 1999 finals against Rose's old team, the Spurs.

As the years passed, as the franchise sagged, that Knicks team was portrayed more as Latrell Sprewell's, even though it was Houston who rescued the Knicks when they were about to meet their maker in the first round in 1999, in Miami, and hit the shots when they needed them most.

Houston, the quiet one, did get credit for the end-game runner against Pat Riley's Heat in Game 5 that saved Van Gundy's job and elevated his career. And while he agreed it was his defining moment, an opinion echoed by his father and college coach, Wade, the memories that best capture Allan Houston's bittersweet totality come from the Eastern Conference finals of the same season, Game 6, with the ball on the left wing, one-on-one against Reggie Miller.

Often, Houston had heard that the Knicks had signed the wrong free-agent shooting guard when they whisked him out of Detroit in 1996. He was only a work in progress, it was said, whereas Miller would have brought his mouthy self-assurance, his imperviousness to pressure.

But in Game 6, it was Houston who couldn't be stopped, who appeared to be lapping Miller in the race, who could even be seen with a snide smile of satisfaction curling at a corner of his mouth as he toyed with his opponent off the dribble.

As he recounted his best nights, Houston mentioned that night, though only the collective joyousness he experienced when the franchise's second trip to the finals since 1973 was clinched. "Hugging my teammates, hugging Jeff, seeing the fans' reaction," he said. "The next day, my daughter was born."

Houston was only 28, the picture of health, a rising star. Back in Indianapolis for the playoffs the following spring, he nodded affirmatively as he agreed that he had never been more confident at his craft than Game 6 the previous year, and promised he was just clearing his throat.

"Like they say," he told me, "yesterday and forevermore."

How fickle the future turned out to be, as the team collapsed gradually around him, then the organization, and finally his knees. Thomas came to survey the wreckage and suggested that Houston retire. Now there is a new coach, Larry Brown, and Thomas, after wheeling and dealing over what seemed like a much longer period than it was, has infused the Knicks with hope.

Houston desperately wanted to move forward with the franchise, but he finally admitted to himself that he had been passed in his chase by younger, more athletic legs. "It became more of a reality to me, that this is what it is," he said.

He told his teammates of his decision and made Stephon Marbury, already with nine N.B.A. years behind him, wonder: who knows where the time goes? "Eventually, this is all going to be over with," Marbury said.

And then one day the news conference is called and the family gathers and the tributes are spoken. Thomas told of how he took the rookie Houston home for spaghetti dinner in Detroit, back when Thomas was near the end of his own Hall of Fame career. Wade Houston recalled his son showing the beginnings of his pure-shooter's form when the targets were lampshades and curtain rods in the family home, all leading to nights at Tennessee when he, the coach, was booed and his son, the star, wanted desperately to make it all better.

Across the peaks and valleys, so many memories, and, above all, there will always be Miami.

E-mail: [email protected]