Ray Allen celebrated his 40th birthday with a giant career-spanning cake
It’s nothing new for an NBA player to celebrate his birthday with an elaborate cake that’d make Buddy Valastro (cake boss) blush. We’ve seen league luminaries like Brandon Jennings, DeMar DeRozan, Stephen Curry, Chris Bosh and Damian Lillard ring in a new year with confounding confections chock full of flamboyant fondant. Such treats have become something of a staple for four-time NBA Most Valuable Player LeBron James, who has not only staked a strong personal claim as basketball’s premier Mr. Cool Cakes, but has even endeavored to make it a hereditary title.
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While the King may hold the crown in the cake game, it appears that his former long-range-sniping teammate with the Miami Heat is taking aim at the throne. Go ahead and get tasty while hanging out in Las Vegas, newly-40-year-old Ray Allen:
Yep, that’s a five-tier cake, with each section representing a distinct period from a basketball journey that began in 1993 and will inevitably result in enshrinement in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.
Up top, you’ve got Allen’s years under Jim Calhoun at the University of Connecticut, where he earned First-Team All-American and Big East Player of the Year honors during the 1995-96 season. Then there’s his time with the Milwaukee Bucks, who drafted him No. 5 overall in 1996 and with whom he developed into a three-time All-Star and one of the game’s deadliest snipers. We move down to his four-plus years with the Seattle SuperSonics, during which he averaged more than 24 points per game and teaming with Rashard Lewis to form the core of one of the game’s more potent offensive attacks. Then there’s his five years with the Boston Celtics, where he teamed with Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to finally win that long-awaited NBA championship in 2008 (which you can see on the right-hand side of that tier in the photo) and his final two years in Miami, where he joined up with James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to make two more Finals trips and earn one more ring (located on the left-hand side of the base).
It’s somewhat reminiscent of the cake fellow Huskies alum Richard Hamilton received on his 35th birthday, but a little sharper, a little cooler, a little more refined even amid all that flash and sugar. In other words, a little more Ray Allen.
“The last 24 hours has been truly incredible,” Allen wrote in the caption of his Instagram photo. “The turn up is real. I just got surprised left and right all day. It’s my birthday and we are gettin it in Vegas style. Thanks to my beautiful wife and all my great friends for settin it off. Oh and the cake!! #Vegas #34turns40”
Whether or not Allen decides to lace ’em up again — last season’s rumors that he’d rejoin LeBron in Cleveland never came to fruition — his is a career worth celebrating in all sorts of ways, big and small. And if you can eat those celebrations with a cup of coffee after a nice meal, well, so much the better.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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