PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
Why Auri ‘Baby Shaq’ Allen has not stopped dreaming of what life can be
Take a few steps inside the small brick rental house sandwiched between Broadway Extension and Classen Boulevard, and you’ll see the newspaper clippings.
All of them are yellowing but laminated, an indication that replacements were expected once upon a time. Surely there would be more stories, more happy endings. But eventually, the old ones had to be dropped in paraffin wax, preserved for the ages.
They are tacked to the drywall with thumbtacks, but each is straight and precise. Hung with care. Hung with pride. One headline proclaims, “Big-time prospect”. Another, “More than hype”. But then there’s the front-page story with the massive photo of the mountain of a man (or is that baby face the face of a child?) that takes the hyperbole to another level.
“The next BIG thing”, it screams.
Take a few more steps past the clippings, and you’ll be standing at his bedroom door.
Auri Allen wasn’t supposed to be here. Not in Oklahoma City. Not in the Britton neighborhood. Not in the back bedroom of the house the 26-year-old shares with his mom.
And he definitely wasn’t supposed to be in a wheelchair.
Nicknamed “Baby Shaq” by Shaquille O’Neal himself, Allen was a basketball superstar in the making. He soared to 6-foot-9 and 300 pounds before he was a teenager, well on his way to where he is now, 7-foot-3. He played with and against the younger versions of some of the biggest stars in the NBA today.
Thing is, this isn’t a sob story about what might have been. Sure, he wishes he could walk and run, and he’d give anything to be able to drop step and throw down a dunk again. But on the day we celebrate all the trappings of independence —life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness —Auri Allen is a reminder that the American dream can still be pretty sweet the second time around.
Coaching the game he once played, he found joy. And more. “Basketball saved my life,” he said. “Not to be cliche. A lot of people say that, but it really did.”
The game could’ve taunted him. Haunted him, even. But instead, it gave him comfort. Acceptance. Purpose. “I’m appreciative.”
••• Auri Allen was born in Nashville. He arrived a month early but still tipped the scales at 8 pounds, 13 ounces. It wasn’t a surprise with a dad who was 6-8and a mom who was 6-1. Had not-so-little Auri gone full term, doctors said he would’ve likely been 11 or 12 pounds.
As an 8-year-old, he was 5-9.
As a 10-year-old, he shot past his mom.
Having played basketball at Belmont University in Nashville, his mom, Pam, introduced him to the game at a young age, albeit in an unconventional way. She’d dress him in a pair of overalls, then go to the gym. When they arrived, she’d put rocks in his pockets and tell him to run up and down the court. Rocks popped out of his overalls as he went, scattering all over the floor.
Once his pockets were empty, Pam told Auri to keep running, but now, he had to zig and zag around the rocks.
She was developing his agility. He was having fun. But by the time he was 12, people around Nashville were buzzing about the budding basketball star. He would get stopped and be asked for autographs all the time. Some people thought he played football for the Titans or the Vols, but as time went on, more people came to know about Allen.
The Tennessean, the big newspaper in town, did a front-page story on him the summer before he started seventh grade, posing the question if Allen was the next Shaq.
Soon after the story ran, representatives from “The Tonight Show” and “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” called the newspaper, and a few months later, Allen and his mom were flown to Los Angeles for a taping of “Ripley’s.”
While Allen was being interviewed for the show, he was asked who his favorite player was.
“Shaquille O’Neal,” Allen said without hesitation.
On cue, Shaq stepped onto the set to meet Allen. They chatted and talked and even swapped phone numbers.
Best of all, Shaq dubbed him “Baby Shaq.”
Over the next year or so, Allen continued his basketball ascent. He went against Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant and James Harden in tournaments. He played with DeMar DeRozan and Brandon Jennings the summer before his freshman year on a team formed by the rapper Master P.
By the time Allen started high school, he was widely regarded as one of the top five players in the country — and some said he was the best.
“He had everything,” said Jovon Fuller, who coached Allen as a freshman at Verbum Dei High School in Los Angeles. So, what went wrong?
••• After homeschooling his sophomore year in Los Angeles, Auri Allen and his mom moved to Las Vegas. He was going to attend one of the private schools with big-time basketball there, but a hip flexor sidelined him for the first month or two of the season.
One Sunday in early 2007, Pam was driving Auri and a couple grandkids to church. Their car was hit at a busy intersection, sending them careening off thestreet and into a brick wall.
There were no fatalities, but Allen and Pam were both injured. She needed neck surgery, and six months after the crash, he required back surgery for a herniated disk.
Allen expected to be back on the court quickly and hoped to be full strength by year’s end.
“I never really got any better,” he said.
He got worse instead. While doing physical therapy, Allen began struggling to flex his right foot. Doctors diagnosed him with foot drop, a condition where the front part of the foot is difficult to lift, and put him in a brace. Because of his size, though, the brace never fit quite right. Allen developed blood clots in his leg.
The downward spiral was only beginning.
He scuffled and stumbled across the stage at his high school graduation, barely able to walk. In the months that followed, he lost the use of his feet bit by bit, day by day.Soon, he needed a walker to get around. Answers were few. Frustrations were many. In 2010, Allen’s mom ran into a friend who lived in Oklahoma. Neither she nor her son had ever been there, but they were looking for a new start. They packed everything into their Ford Expedition and headed east.
Allen did physical therapy for several months and made enough progress to consider a return to basketball. Maybe he could play at OU for Jeff Capel.
But then in April while he was taking a bath, Allen realized he couldn’t feel the water on his feet. He’d lost all feeling in them.
He spent nearly two months in the hospital as doctors tried to figure out what was going on. Day after day, they eliminated possibilities. They knew what it wasn’t, but they never determined what it was.
Eventually, Allen was discharged and sent to a rehab hospital. He worked. He improved. He went home.
But then a few months later, his health declined and he had to go back into the hospital. More problems. More tests.But no diagnosis.
That cycle continued for more than two years.
Worse, all those guys who he’d played ball with or against were going to college or getting drafted. Some were even making it big. Allen was happy about their successes, but he wanted to know why he couldn’t have the same.
Allen had always been a gentle giant, a big kid with a big smile. He would knock you down but would extend a hand to help you up almost as soon as you hit the ground.
But his light began to fade as the years went on. The less he could stand on his own and the more he needed his wheelchair to get around, the worse he felt.
“You wake up every morning and you see a wheelchair or a you see a walker, and you try to move and it doesn’t work,” Allen said. “You get depressed.”
He reached a breaking point after one of his doctors ran a bunch of tests and gave him an indication that they were close to a diagnosis.
He went to the doctor’s office hyped.
“I don’t have anything for you,” she told him. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
All his hopes for that appointment came crashing down. All his disappointments from the past closed in, too. He started sobbing.
The tears didn’t stop when he went home. What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t someone figure it out? Why wasn’t there any way to get out of his wheelchair? Auri Allen wanted to die. “I’m tired of not knowing,” he said. “I’m tired of the runaround or forever wondering.” He considered suicide. But a few hours later, he had a realization. He could let his situation kill him, or he could stop worrying about what he didn’t have and what he didn’t know.
He could get back to living.
•••
Auri Allen didn’t change overnight; he still had days where he didn’t get out of bed. But encouraged by his mom —or maybe commanded by her —he started going to a gym.
One day while he was lifting weights at what was then Transformation Fitness in Edmond, he saw some kids playing basketball. It had been more than two years since he’d even touched a basketball, but he wheeled onto the court and started talking to the boys.
They were part of the Storm, a successful home-school program in Oklahoma City.
The Storm needed a coach for one of its teams, and Allen ended up taking over the bunch that he lovingly called “The Misfits.”
“I had no idea what was going on,” Allen said of coaching, “but as soon as I got into it, it felt like the other piece. I found it.”
Coaching was the piece missing in the puzzle of his life.
Allen loved teaching the fundamentals, really diving into the technical aspects of the game. But he also relished getting to know the players, building trust and developing bonds.
After a few years coaching home-school teams, Allen decided to strike out on his own. Hestarted 3D AthletesOKC, coaching teams of various agesand working with players individually.
There have been rough moments as there are with most new businesses, but when they happen, Allen is buoyed by the ah-ha moments.
He experienced them as a player, times when something that a coach had been preaching in practice finally clicked in a game.But as cool as those lightbulb moments were when he was playing, they are even better as a coach.
Recently,Allen had a player who didn’t want to shoot. The kid was tall and had a nice shot, and the coach wanted him to use it in a game.
“I just want to pass,” the kid said.
“Trust me,” Allen said, “shoot it.”
Finally, the kid did —and got blocked.
Allen pulled him over to the bench.
“Don’t rush,” he said.
“Take a smart shot.”
Later on, the kid got into the post and took a little hook shot. It fell through the rim, and the player looked at his coach and gave a little head nod.
Auri Allen felt like he’d just dunked again.
•••
Sitting courtside in his wheelchair before a practice earlier this summer, Auri Allen was asked if he had a theory about his medicalissues. He’d had doctors give him all sorts of answers —cancer, multiple sclerosis, even a few terminal illnesses —and none were right. What did he think? “I dunno,” he said after a moment. “After spending so much time on it, my mom and others hate this, but I don’t really care.”
Those closest to him wish someone could diagnosis his problem; he is still such a young man that his life expectancy as well as his quality of life would skyrocket if he could simply walk under his own power again.
That’s why family and friends encouraged him to apply for the Legacy Program at REACT, a neuro-restorative facility in Dallas. Legacy lasts 12 weeks and strives to strengthen and stretch both body and mind.
Allen was accepted and will do the Legacy Program later this year.
He’s excited about the potential.
“There’s no guarantee you’re going to get better, that you’re going to walk,” he said. “But I’ve learned in this situation you never close the door to anything. You just simply say, ‘This is the opportunity I have, and I’m going to embrace it and appreciate it.’”
That’s what he has done with coaching. No, it isn’t what he originally set out to do. It isn’t playing college ball. It isn’t making the NBA.
But just because one dream ended doesn’t mean Auri Allen stopped dreaming.
“I just want,” he said, “to be the strongest version of myself.”