Ray Allen broke Reggie Miller's record for most career playoff 3-pointers on Thursday with his 321st. (AP)

Ray Allen broke Reggie Miller‘s record for most career playoff 3-pointers on Thursday, knocking down the 321st of his career in the fourth quarter of the Heat’s Game 3 victory over the Bucks.

Allen tied the record in the second quarter of Thursday’s game. Then, with 8:37 left in the fourth, he took a pass from Norris Cole and made the shot from near the baseline on the right side to move ahead of Miller’s mark.

Allen already is the all-time record holder for 3-pointers made in a career and owned the record for the most in a single season (269 in 2005-06) until Stephen Curry broke it last week.

Thursday’s game was the 131st of Allen’s postseason career, so it took him 13 games fewer than Miller’s 144 to reach that mark. He made five of his eight shots from beyond the arc on Thursday as the Heat won, 104-91, to take a 3-0 lead in the series.

Welcome to Thursday’s Morning Mashup. For the latest news, start at our WEEI.com home page or click here for the top stories from our news wire.

THURSDAY’S BROADCAST HIGHLIGHTS:
MLB: Red Sox at Indians, 7:05 p.m. (NESN; WEEI-FM)
MLB: Giants at Brewers, 1:10 p.m. (MLB Network)
MLB: Rangers at Cubs, 2:10 p.m. (WGN)
MLB: Cardinals at Phillies, 7:05 p.m. (MLB Network)
NHL: Devils at Flyers, 7:30 p.m. (NBCSN)
NHL: Wild at Sharks, 10:30 p.m. (NHL Network)

AROUND THE WEB:

Ray Allen is in Miami now, but his thoughts were with Boston following the Marathon bombing. (AP)

♦ Former Celtics guard Ray Allen no longer is in Boston, but the victims of the Boston Marathon were on his mind Wednesday night before his Heat played the Magic in Miami.

“We have a family friend that was there, that ran the marathon, and she’s in intensive care now because she lost her leg,” Allen said. “A good friend of mine, one of the managers of his restaurant, the 29-year-old that was killed was his manager. And his assistant chef, I don’t know if he said he lost both his legs or one, but he got hit pretty hard and he’s dealing with that now.”

Allen said he would have been somewhere close to the bomb scene had he still been in Boston, cheering on family members.

“We would have been sitting at the finish line, me and my whole family, waiting on my mom and my wife. … They would have been running if we were in Boston,” Allen sad. “So that presented some anxiety when I thought about it.”

♦ Rasheed Wallace won’t come back to haunt (or help) the Celtics in the playoffs as a member of the Knicks. The 38-year-old forward announced his retirement Wednesday after his final unsuccessful comeback bid — a brief appearance in Monday’s game against the Bobcats. Wallace, who returned from a two-year retirement to join the Knicks this season, missed most of the year with injuries — most recently a broken foot that required surgery in February.

“Rasheed has given this team everything he had,” Knicks coach Mike Woodson said in a statement. “He is a winner, true professional and leader on and off the court. Due to his injury, he will not be available to play for us during the playoffs. We owe this season’s success to veterans like Rasheed.”

Wallace, who was a member of the 2009-10 Celtics team that lost in Game 7 of the NBA finals, played 21 games for New York.

♦ Last week, Mark Sanchez‘ personal coach, former NFL quarterback Jeff Garcia, took some shots at Tim Tebow. “Having Tebow there doesn’t bring anything positive. It just brings distraction,” Sanchez said. “For Mark, the main competition is going to be David Garrard and Greg McElroy.”

On Wednesday, Tebow’s coach, Steve Clarkson, tried to defend Tebow by claiming he was set up to fail. Clarkson also took a swipe at Sanchez, calling him “fragile-minded.”

“I think [Tebow] was purposefully sent to New York,” Clarkson said on a conference call, ignoring Broncos vice president John Elway‘s explanation that Tebow chose New York over Jacksonville. “From the standpoint: You send him to a situation where you have instability with your coach — you don’t know if he’s coming or going. You have a fragile-minded Mark Sanchez at quarterback. You stick Tim Tebow in there and you kill two birds with one stone. So if you’re Denver, you’ve got to be thinking, ‘We send him to New York, we basically kill an opponent and, at the same time, Tim Tebow doesn’t come back to bite us in the proverbial butt, if you will, because he’s not going to make it out of there.’ ”

Clarkson also said the Jets’ limitations on Tebow guaranteed he would not succeed.

“I think in Tim’s case, they walked him into New York and said, ‘We’ve got four plays for you. You execute these four plays and that’s all you’re going to get,’ ” Clarkson said. “Well, when you walk on the field and that’s all you practice, and you don’t get any meaningful reps and you walk into a game and basically the defense is telling your offensive line basically where the ball is going to go, it’s pretty depressing and it doesn’t give you much room for hope. I would hope whoever, wherever he ends up that they give him an opportunity, and I think if they do, they’ll be pleasantly surprised. I think the guy still can play.”

ON THIS DAY TRIVIA: On April 18, 1997, the Bruins fired coach Steve Kasper one week after the season ended with the Bruins failing to make the playoffs for the first time since 1967. Who replaced him?

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Ray Allen pushed the Celtics aside to sign with the Heat in the offseason. (AP)

Ray Allen has acknowledged that there is a possibility that this could be his final NBA season.

Allen is in the first year of a three-year deal with the Heat after leaving the Celtics. Even at the age of 37 he is proving why he is commonly viewed as the greatest shooter in league history.

Allen’s 43.2 percent shooting from 3-point range ranks him seventh in the league. Though he is having a productive season off the bench for the defending NBA champions, Allen said he is not really sure when he’ll call it quits.

“I don’t know when I’ll retire. I’d like to get through the year first. I feel great; my body feels good. I’ve just got to get through,” Allen said.

A 10-time All-Star, he is being paid $3.09 million this season. He has a player option for next season at $3.2 million, but he acknowledged there’s a chance he’d be willing to walk away at the end of the season.

“It’s possible, yeah,” Allen said. “Who knows what’s going to happen over the course of the summer? I have two years left on my contract. We’ll see how it goes.”

The former UConn star began his NBA career in 1996 with the Bucks and spent six years in Milwaukee before heading to Seattle to play for the SuperSonics.

“I’m at a point where I’ve been pretty successful and I’ve gotten to the point where I really understand the game and how to play it,” he said. “But I’m not going to be that guy who just hangs on. At some point, I can let it go.”

Over the final week of 2012, WEEI.com will count down the top 10 stories of the year in Boston sports. This entry in the countdown is No. 5: the Celtics’ loss to the Heat in the Eastern Conference finals.

Check out our previous entries:
No. 10: NHL lockout
No. 9: Wes Welker’s up-and-down year
No. 8: Bruins’ early playoff elimination
No. 7: Ray Allen’s departure from Celtics
No. 6: Tim Thomas’ political controversy and sabbatical

The Celtics put forth a valiant effort but were not able to knock off LeBron James and the Heat in the Eastern Conference finals. (AP)

The Celtics were one victory away from advancing to the NBA finals. But what stood in the way, LeBron James and the Miami Heat, turned out to be more than the Big Three and the rest of the Celtics could handle.

A 101-88 defeat in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals put an abrupt end to a playoff run that looked like it had legs after a comeback season from the Celtics, who were under .500 at the All-Star break of a lockout-shortened season.

The C’s battled injury issues all season. Jeff Green and Chris Wilcox had season-ending heart ailments. Jermaine O’Neal had his season end early, and Avery Bradley missed the Heat series. Even as the playoffs began, a sprained MCL slowed down Paul Pierce and bone spurs kept Ray Allen off the floor.

After finishing first in the Atlantic Division at 39-27, the Celtics took down the Hawks in six games in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. They went on to get by the 76ers in a seven-game series and line things up for a big series with the Heat.

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Over the final week of 2012, WEEI.com will count down the top 10 stories of the year in Boston sports. This entry in the countdown is No. 7: Ray Allen’s departure from the Celtics.

Check out our previous entries:
No. 10: NHL lockout
No. 9: Wes Welker’s up-and-down year
No. 8: Bruins’ early playoff elimination

Ray Allen pushed the Celtics aside to sign with the Heat as a free agent in the offseason. (AP)

Heat owner Micky Arison first published the news of Ray Allen’s departure from the Celtics on Twitter, signaling the official end of the Big Three era in Boston.

Its 2:30am in London and I was just woken up with great news.Welcome to the family #20!!

— Micky Arison (@MickyArison) July 7, 2012

Allen made the choice to head south to Miami for around half the annual salary the Celtics were offering. In Miami, Allen would have the chance to play with LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, while making a fresh start with a new team. Allen signed a three-year, $9.7 million deal in July.

Reports that Allen was unhappy in Boston began to surface. There was an apparent rift between Allen and mercurial point guard Rajon Rondo, and Allen was said to be unhappy with a lack of respect from management. A Yahoo! Sports report quoted a source as saying: “He felt he was getting respect [from the Heat] that he hadn’t gotten from [Celtics president] Danny [Ainge] and [coach] Doc [Rivers] anymore. … The [Heat] presentation was incredible.”

Ainge had placed Allen on the trading block in February in hopes that the C’s could get a younger player. And a deal with the Grizzlies for O.J. Mayo apparently was so close to being done that Rivers contacted Allen to let him know. That didn’t sit well with Allen.

Then Rivers inserted Avery Bradley, favoring his defensive tact over Allen’s 3-point shooting ability, into the starting lineup. Allen only started in the Eastern Conference finals because Bradley was out with a shoulder injury.

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John Lucas III

After agreeing to terms with Ray Allen late last week, the Heat have three open roster spots remaining.

According to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, Miami is looking to fill one of those with Bulls free agent point guard John Lucas III.

Last season was the best of Lucas’ career, as he averaged 7.5 points and 2.2 assists in 49 games with the Bulls, including a 24-point performance against the Heat in March.

The 29-year-old might not return to the Bulls since the team reportedly has a deal in place with free agent Hawks guard Kirk Hinrich. He told the Chicago Sun Times there are eight teams interested in him.

For the final 10 days of 2011, WEEI.com will count down the top 10 stories of the year in Boston sports. Our next entry in the countdown is No. 8: The Celtics’ playoff loss to the Heat.

Check out our previous entries:
No. 10: NBA lockout
No. 9: NFL lockout

Ray Allen and the Celtics tried to hang around against the Heat in the playoffs but were eliminated in five games. (AP)

Even before the start of the 2010-11 NBA season, Doc Rivers knew that there was one team the Celtics were going to have to face if they were to put together another championship run. When the Heat formed their own Big Three with Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh, it was evident that Boston and the new superteam on South Beach would end up in a postseason showdown at some point.

So it was no surprise that after sweeping the Knicks in the first round of the playoffs, the Celtics were preparing to face the Heat win what many called the most anticipated second-round matchup in NBA history.

“We assumed when they put this team together, at some point if we want to put another banner up then we’ll probably have to go through them,” Rivers said of the Heat days before the series began.

The Celtics were 3-1 against Miami in the regular season, but all three wins came before the All-Star break, when Boston was 40-14, tied with the Heat atop the Eastern conference standings. After the All-Star break, the Celtics were just 16-12, dropping to third in the Eastern conference, while the Bulls and Heat rose to the top to secure the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds, respectively.

Many attributed Boston’s poor play in the second half the season to the trade of Kendrick Perkins. The menacing center was traded to the Thunder along with guard Nate Robinson on Feb. 24 in exchange for center Nenad Kristic, young forward Jeff Green and a 2012 first-round pick.

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Former Patriot Asante Samuel is one of the headliners in a highly regarded defensive backfield in Philadelphia, leading to lofty expectations for the Eagles this season. (AP)

The recent frenzy of NFL free agency has yielded a bevy of high-profile signings, with a good portion of the spoils going to the Eagles. Some are calling them the “all-hype team,” and with several big-name players being added to the Eagles roster, the name certainly fits. Since 2000, many teams have gone all-in during the offseason and attracted a fair amount of attention in the process. With that in mind, we’ll take a look at some of the most hyped teams in recent years, including some that lived up to expectations and others that didn’t.

10. 2010 Cincinnati Bengals

Looking back on last season’s Bengals, it’s hard to believe there was any hype at all over this 4-12, self-destructive Cincinnati squad. However, following a 2009 season in which the Bengals won the AFC North with a 10-6 record, the team paired Terrell Owens with Chad Ochocinco to create one of the most outspoken and talented receiving corps in the NFL. Unfortunately for Bengals fans, the receivers’ full potential was never realized, due in small part to Carson Palmer‘s 20 interceptions and 82.4 passer rating. Ochocinco started the season by asking, “How in the world are you going to stop this duo?” Cornerbacks around the league answered, “Easily.”

9. 2005-06 Miami Heat

The Heat have been the subject of significant hype in the past, even before LeBron James took his talents to South Beach. Amidst the ongoing drama between Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal in the 2004 offseason, the big man was traded to Miami for Caron Butler, Lamar Odom, Brian Grant and a first-round draft pick. Dwyane Wade had already dazzled NBA fans as a rookie, and the Heat dreamed of creating a Lakers-like dynasty on the East Coast. Miami fell short in the Eastern Conference finals that year but added more talent (and hype) in 2005-06 with Antoine Walker, Jason Williams, James Posey and Gary Payton. The Heat, under Pat Riley, took down the Mavericks in six games for the title.

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The Celtics' trade of Kendrick Perkins is just one of many trades that shocked Boston sports fans in this young century. (AP)

The Celtics’ trade of Kendrick Perkins and Nate Robinson to the Thunder for Jeff Green and Nenad Krstic on Thursday marked the second surprising trade of the winter for Boston sports teams. Back in December, the Red Sox got Adrian Gonzalez from the Padres for prospects Casey Kelly, Anthony Rizzo and Reymond Fuentes. That got us thinking about other shocking trades by the hometown teams this century. Here are the top dozen.

12. Nov. 24, 2005: Sox land Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell

Top prospect Hanley Ramirez had been mentioned in a number of rumors, but it appeared that he was pretty much untouchable. That was until the Sox sent the shortstop to the Marlins — along with prospects Anibal Sanchez, Jesus Delgado and Harvey Garcia — in exchange for Beckett, Lowell and reliever Guillermo Mota. As expected, Ramirez turned into a superstar, but Beckett and Lowell became key parts of the 2007 World Series team. Most would probably agree that this deal was a win-win.

11. Nov. 28, 2003: Curt Schilling comes to Boston

Schilling was just one year removed from back-to-back 20-win seasons and consecutive Cy Young runner-ups when the Sox acquired him from the Diamondbacks for pitchers Casey Fossum, Brandon Lyon and Jorge De La Rosa. Lyon and De La Rosa went on to have serviceable careers, but Schilling helped lead the Sox to two World Series titles, posting another 20-win season and Cy Young runner-up in 2004 along the way.

10. Sept. 18, 2009: B’s ship Phil Kessel to Toronto

The Bruins sending Kessel to the Maple Leafs wasn’t a total shock because everyone knew the B’s probably wouldn’t be able to keep all three of Kessel, David Krejci and Milan Lucic long term. But it’s still surprising any time you trade a 21-year-old former fifth overall pick who was the leading goal-scorer on your first-place team the previous season. The deal ended up looking much better when the first-round pick Boston got in return turned out to be the second overall selection, which became Tyler Seguin.

9. March 6, 2000: Ray Bourque heads to Colorado

The trade itself wasn’t shocking — everyone knew Bourque wanted a chance to win the Stanley Cup and everyone knew the Bruins were happy to accommodate the legend — but just seeing Bourque in another jersey was. After 21-plus seasons in Boston, Bourque was sent to the Avalanche along with Dave Andreychuk in exchange for Brian Rolston, Martin Grenier, Samuel Pahlsson and a first-round pick. Bourque and the Avs went on to win the Cup the next season.

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For the final 10 days of 2010, WEEI.com will count down the top 10 stories of the year. In what was a memorable 12 months for all four of Boston’s major professional teams, there was a plethora of compelling storylines. The countdown continues with No. 2: The Celtics’ playoff run.

Check out our previous entries:
No. 10: Kevin Garnett’s return to form
No. 9: Patriots’ playoff meltdown vs. Ravens
No. 8: Marc Savard-Matt Cooke incident and aftermath
No. 7: Red Sox derailed by injuries
No. 6: Bruins’ playoff collapse vs. Flyers
No. 5: Patriots’ Randy Moss saga
No. 4: Red Sox’ signings of Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford
No. 3: Patriots’ resurgence

Also, make sure to cast your vote in WEEI.com’s poll for the 2010 Boston Athlete of the Year.

Kevin Garnett and the Celtics put forth a strong effort in the postseason before falling to Kobe Bryant and the Lakers in Game 7 of the NBA finals. (AP)

On June 17, 2010, the Celtics suffered one of the worst losses in their franchise’s history in Game 7 of the NBA finals against the Lakers. It was only the fourth time the Celtics had lost an NBA finals series and it was the first time they had ever lost a deciding Game 7. That it came against the Lakers in a game that was there for the taking only adds to the agony.

And yet this historic defeat also represented one of the great triumphs in team history, because exactly two months earlier when the Celtics took the court against the Heat to open the playoffs, not even Tommy Heinsohn himself would have predicted that they would have been four points away from an 18th championship.

Their improbable run to the finals defied all wisdom, both conventional and analytic, and breathed life into a franchise that spent the winter months of 2010 on a respirator. The Celtics went 27-27 over the final four months of the regular season and won only two of their last 10 games heading into the playoffs. The nadir came in a home loss to the lowly Wizards when afterward Doc Rivers uttered the quote that seemed to serve as their epitaph.

“If we make a run in the playoffs, will you forget [the regular season]? That’s my question,” Rivers said. “If we don’t, then it’s probably who we were all year — an inconsistent team — at least in the second half of the year. We’ll find that out.”

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