"Ray Allen yesterday exercised the player option on the two-year, $20 million contract he signed last summer, returning to the Celtics for a fifth season. The decision guarantees that the Big Three will return next season. Allen never gave the organization reason to believe he wouldn't pick up the option, and president of basketball operations Danny Ainge had spoken about next season as if Allen's return was a certainty. But Ainge said yesterday that Allen's return wasn't necessarily an afterthought as the team reconstructs for next season.

"I was hopeful that Ray would want to come back and I got the impression in my exit interview with him that he would want to come back, but you never know,'' Ainge said. "I guess nothing's a foregone conclusion with these things, but it was an assumption that we thought would happen and we hoped to have happen.''"