Fun with Pop Culture: Hello, Goodbye (Part Two)

For Part One, click here.

Still more interesting than health care reform.

If Rolling Stone could devote a cover story to analyzing the Beatles' breakup almost 40 years after the fact, I think we can break down Ray Allen's departure from the "C"-tles one more time, four weeks after the fact.

So:  Why is Walter Ray Allen a member of the Miami Heat?

Let's take a look at the various explanations we've heard over the past month -- With a Little Help From Our Friends.

Fun with Pop Culture: Hello, Goodbye (Part One)

Ray Allen has fallen in with a bad crowd.

I've always been a little resentful of the "Heatles" nickname.

Yes, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh garnered Beatle-esque media hype and fan attention from the get-go -- I get it.  But as an unabashed post-Decision Heat hater and a huge Beatles fan, I've never felt totally comfortable linking the prima donnas from Miami with the lads from Liverpool.  Such an awesome band deserves equally awesome basketball counterparts (which is why "Run-T.M.C." worked so well).

Plus, I always thought, how could we compare a team built around a triumvirate to the Fab Four?  That's just bad math.  And while journalists and amateur Photoshoppers alike awkwardly tried to shoehorn various Pete Bests into the role of "Fourth Heatle" (from Mike Miller to Norris Cole, Coach Spoelstra to Emperor Riley, and even the artist formerly known as Juwan Howard), nothing quite worked.

Until now.  Official as of this past Wednesday, Miami has finally found a worthy Ringo in Walter Ray Allen.

Problem is, of course, that Ray was already part of a pretty good band -- one that Celtics fans were quite fond of, and one that won't be as easily forgotten as Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.

It was a group that actually laid claim to a Beatles-inspired nickname years before LeBron took his talents to South Beach.