Les Carpenter / Times staff columnist
Allen has made Sonics his team

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There had to be another side to him. Everything always came so easy to Ray Allen, ever the precocious student, all grown up with the beautiful jump shot before he turned 19.

But the ease meant he never had to fight to lead. He never had to mold a team of his own, mainly because there was always somebody. In college it was the coach who yelled too much. In Milwaukee it was the cast of incorrigible superstars who tugged on each other's egos.

In Seattle it was the ghost of the man he was traded for.

"It was Gary Payton's team," he said. "It was built around Gary."

The ghost is gone now, three teams removed until the Sonics played Payton in Boston a few days ago and it was hardly a spectacle anymore. Playing Payton had simply become another green-and-yellow square on the pocket schedule.

So the realization that Allen had to be something more came this summer, not on a basketball court, not in a meeting with the coaches or team executives, but in a series of conversations with friends who have nothing to do with basketball.

"From the outside looking in you have to make your impact felt with the guys on the floor," he said they told him. "You've almost been selfish to the point where you get yourself ready but now you have to make the other guys get ready, too."

This is the hardest thing for the best athletes to learn. The drive for perfection is usually so single-minded that it's easy to get trapped in a cocoon, unable to notice the team going on outside. Allen spent years working on his jump shot, making it arc high into the lights until it has become perhaps the most dependable outside shot in the league.

But taking that effort and putting it into forming a group of men into a real team was a different thing entirely. He thought about this last evening as he pulled on his gold Sonics jersey before his team with the best record in the NBA went out and beat the New Jersey Nets 92-79 last night.
 
What does leadership mean to you? Allen was asked.

He paused.

"Being the leader means doing the unpopular thing a lot of times," he said.

It means being the one who sends teammates grumbling when he tells the coaches that it would be better if they run early in the morning rather than go through a lazy shoot-around, not because he wants to but because he thinks doing so would be better for the team. It also means ending nights out earlier than he would like because he thinks he must set an example for the others by heading off to bed.

And yet something has worked with this young team that no sane person thought would be any good. The Sonics are 12-2 now, which shouldn't mean a lot in November given the way Seattle started off the last two seasons — 8-2 and 6-2 — before heading into a free-fall. But 12 wins are 12 wins and eventually enough early wins can build up enough of a base to keep the Sonics from tumbling completely into the abyss.

And if you're searching for a reason for 12-2, you need to start with the team's best player. For the first time, he has brought them here with more than just a jump shot.

They are doing things as a group now, which sometimes happened in the past. But the commitment to togetherness is stronger now.

A couple of weeks ago, Allen, Rashard Lewis, Jerome James and Damien Wilkins walked into a restaurant he likes in Toronto. They began chatting with the restaurant's owner, who told them about the other NBA players who stop in for meals.

When the Detroit Pistons come to town they will stop into the restaurant in groups of six and seven, the owner said. This made an impact on Allen.

"We have had great chemistry this year," he said. "You could look around at the other teams in the league where you think the chemistry isn't great and you can see the players don't even want to do anything together, they don't even want to be in the same city and then you look at the record. It reflects."

The player for whom it all came so easy demands more now. He has challenged the team's collection of big men, insisting they produce by taking better position down low and putting up smarter shots. He talks about the "loooong talks" he's had this year with the team's most damning center, Jerome James.

And so far things have been better.

"It's a caring thing," Allen said. "If you care about your teammates and you care about your team you will do things to help it. I want to win. I want us to be part of a team."

Payton is very gone now.

The Sonics had to become Ray Allen's team.

Les Carpenter: 206-464-2280 or lcarpenter@seattletimes.com