Allen’s reputation built on irritation
WALTHAM — Grayson Allen’s emotions have been on raw display since his freshman year at Duke, so the 22-year-old guard is well-accustomed to questions about his on-court antics and style.
NBA coaches and general managers now routinely ask Allen about his controversial trail as he goes through the pre-draft workout process, with the most egregious moments a series of tripping incidents. At one point in his junior season, Allen was suspended for one game and stripped of his captaincy by coach Mike Krzyzewski after tripping an Elon University player.
But the Duke coach also cherished the shooting guard’s competitive spirit. Even if he does sometimes go overboard.
“What you do see in me is on the court, and on the court I am a competitive — I’m an irritant to the other team,” Allen said after competing in a six-player pre-draft workout for the Celtics yesterday.
“Emotional. Fired up. And so that’s what people see, and that’s what they judge off of. So, I guess that’s pretty fair because that’s all they know,” he said. “Yeah. I think that’s really the big thing about it is, it’s really ‘Grayson Allen, the basketball player,’ And that’s what y’all see because I’m a reserved guy. I’m a quiet guy. I don’t share what I do off the court. I don’t talk about good, positive stuff that will make me look like a good guy off the court. I don’t talk about that because I’d rather have most of my life private.”
The phrase “irritant” isn’t necessarily bad in a basketball sense, of course. Doc Rivers, back in his Celtics tenure, used that word when handing out praise for defense among his players, most notably including Brian Scalabrine.
And Allen seems to understand that quality can help him find a job in the NBA. He’s not simply a shooter. He’s a shooter with an edge, who also opened the eyes of scouts and general managers with some athletic performances during the recent NBA draft combine in Chicago.
The teams that met with him that weekend all had the same question, too, about that odd compulsion to trip opponents and generally pour out his emotions.
Hey, Danny Ainge, another Allen has been compared to, was also known as an irritant. Just ask Pat Riley.
“This is a job interview, so I expect to answer it now. And I’m just ready for it,” said Allen. “But at the same time, every interview I do with a team, I sit here and talk about it, too. And I’ve done this for the last three years. So, for that sake, it’s getting old, but I understand that’s what it is. I’ve made my mistakes. I’ve gotta live with the judgment for it.
“Every single team so far has just looked at it as competitiveness,” he said. “Nobody has scolded me for it, or anything like that. I obviously have to talk about it and talk through it, say where it comes from and what I’m doing to improve my emotions on the court and stuff like that. But at the end of the day I’m not getting rid of that, because guys want an emotional and competitive guy out there. You just have to control it.”
Marcus Smart faced a similar challenge when he first came into the league, and has been forced to regulate his own emotions in game situations ever since.
So Allen had many reasons to feel at home yesterday under the Celtics banners overlooking the team’s practice court. He played with Jayson Tatum and Semi Ojeleye — the latter before transferring to SMU — at Duke.
He knows Celtics owner Steve Pagliuca, a former Duke walk-on and active Blue Devil alumnus, as well as his son Nick Pagliuca, another of Allen’s former teammates.
He knew before yesterday, too, that he’d have to answer the same questions all over again.
“I have to address the lows as much as the highs. When I’ve talked about what I do well I talk about that. When I have to talk about the mistakes I’ve made I talk about that,” he said. “I’ve talked about my mistakes for the last three or four years now. Teams know that — just want to find out who I am, if I’m going to be a professional on and off the court, if I’m going to be a good teammate in the locker room, all that stuff they don’t get to see just from watching film.”