USA TODAY International Edition
Duke’s Allen had high expectations
Duke guard looks to keep reaching new heights
As a boy, guard stood on a recycling container to learn how to dunk.
The boy loved the feeling of flying.
He’d put on one of his favorite NBA jerseys, flip the recycling bin upside down on the driveway and launch himself up at an 8- foottall basket. Ten- year- old Grayson Allen would soar and then dunk the ball, over and over again.
“He’d dunk like he was in the NBA,” says his mother, Sherry Allen. “It was something he was determined that he was going to master. It’s a crowd- pleaser. I still, to this day, don’t get when somebody dunks, what makes that crowd go crazy like that.”
But Allen always understood the energy, the rush, the thrill, even as a child. Eventually, the hoop got raised to 10 feet. Then, the recycling bin went away. In ninth grade, Allen dunked for the first time on a regulation basket.
“I had so much joy,” he says. “It was in the middle of practice, too; it wasn’t in warm- ups or anything. We were doing this drill, and I jumped up and tried it and got it. I just had so much joy. I stayed after practice for probably an hour jumping, just trying to dunk again.”
Allen likes to think his athleticism stems from this and the hours spent perfecting the art of dunking on a concrete driveway in Jacksonville. But he’d always been able to get up. It’s what drew him into basketball in the first place; he chose hoops over soccer in part because of his growing obsession with the dunk.
It’s funny to look back on those miniature- hoop moments of magic. Were Allen not so driven to master the dunk and not gifted with such athleticism, the 6- 4 guard wouldn’t have thrown down some of the most memora- ble ones of the last two years. Dunks made him the fan favorite he is today at Duke. Dunks announced his arrival on the national scene, like the time he leaped 6- 11 center Jahlil Okafor in the McDonald’s All American Game. And the ones he threw down in last year’s Countdown to Craziness season tip- off event.
The most famous one came April 4 during Duke’s Final Four game against Michigan State. Allen missed a three- point shot, snagged his own rebound along the baseline and slammed it down with his right hand early in the second half of the Blue Devils’ win. Two nights later, Allen’s 16 points off the bench helped Duke win its fifth NCAA men’s basketball championship and made him a national sensation.
“He’d dunk like he was in the NBA. It was something he was determined that he was going to master.” Sherry Allen, on son Grayson learning how to dunk as a boy
A couple of weeks ago, Allen’s father, William, turned on the television and began replaying the national championship game. It was his and his wife’s fourth time watching it, and they still couldn’t believe it when their son subbed in.
“Still a surprise,” Sherry Allen says. “We’re going, ‘ He got in the game! He got in that game.’ ... That was just so amazing to us. I didn’t know he got in that early.”
They were even more shocked when they watched it happen live seven months ago in Indianapolis. Allen played significant minutes in the first half, but his most important contribution would come in the second, with Duke trailing by nine and just over 13 minutes to play.
When Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski tells the story of what happened, it sounds like he’s reading from a movie script, associate head coach Jeff Capel says. The screenplay would begin with Krzyzewski kicking guard Rasheed Sulaimon off the team in late January, reducing the total number of scholarship players on the roster to eight.
“We have this meeting, and in the meeting ... Coach explains that eight is enough,” Capel says. “He turns eight sideways, and it’s infinity. We’re going to keep going, and he goes through it and he says, ‘ Each guy is important; you’re all going to play.’
“You fast- forward to the championship game. We’re down nine; the eighth guy comes in who’s averaging eight minutes at that time, and he scores eight straight. … Then, all of the sudden, it wasn’t just the scoring; it was the spark.”
That spark came in a surprising form, at least to the coaching staff that hadn’t heard Allen be vocal on the court. But after he recovered a loose ball in a scramble, he let out a roar.
“It wasn’t really calculated,” Allen says. “In the second half, before I had gotten into the game there, I was on the bench, and I could just tell, I think everyone could see, that our team was just kind of dead. I was screaming from the bench trying to get people fired up. That’s not as powerful as if you’re on the court making plays.
“I got on the court, and that opportunity just opens up where I made a play and now I have this opportunity to fire up the team.” DREAMING BIG But for that opportunity to come, Allen first had to earn a place at Duke.
This seemed unlikely — his high school coach initially kind of laughed at the idea, which Allen admits was the right response to his lofty goal at the time.
A growth spurt early in his career at Providence School in Jacksonville accompanied key skill development, and eventually AAU basketball put a spotlight on Allen. The dreams of Duke began much earlier.
The challenge is that many kids have dreams of Duke. The Blue Devils coaching staff receives server loads of unsolicited emails from high school coaches, AAU coaches and parents about prospective recruits. Take a look at this kid, they all say — and the Blue Devils coaches always at least glance at them, just in case.
Just in case there’s a player such as Allen.
The summer leading into Allen’s junior year, Providence coach Jim Martin called Duke to throw Allen’s name into the ring of potential prospects. At the time, most of the Duke staff was at the London Olympics working for USA Basketball, so assistant coach Nate James drew the scouting assignment. James watched Allen at an event in Richmond, Va., that July and reported to the rest of the Duke staff that he really liked Allen and thought he had good athleticism, competitiveness and toughness. By the time Krzyzewski was back on U. S. turf, Duke was serious about Allen. A routine recruitment process commenced, culminating in a visit to Jacksonville.
“I was honestly ready to commit in the in- home visit,” Allen says. “I think it was maybe five or six days ( later). They had to have known I was going to commit. ... ( I have) no poker face.”
Allen ultimately amassed dozens of offers from major- college programs. He became a McDonald’s All- American, winning the All American Game’s annual dunk contest, and was rated a four- star prospect by Rivals. com. He was the first commit of what would become the nation’s topranked recruiting class.
But by the time he arrived on campus, he nearly became an afterthought — to those outside the program, at least. He was “the other guy” in a star- studded class including Okafor, Justise Winslow and Tyus Jones, three who played right away, filled pivotal roles and became first- round picks in the 2015 NBA draft.
Allen, meanwhile, spent a lot of time on the bench.
“It was definitely very difficult,” he says. “From the time I started playing ... when I tried out for a team in sixth grade and on, I was always starting through high school. When you come here and then it’s the first time coming off the bench ever, that’s an adjustment.
“I don’t think I handled it the best I could’ve, when I first got here. I didn’t have an attitude or anything like that, but I think I got a little bit down because I wasn’t playing that well.”
His mother had suspected this might happen. She and her husband had brought it up in many a family discussion before their son got to college. They reminded him it’s rare at any program for freshmen to start. They reminded him he hadn’t arrived just yet and there was still so much work to do. His time would come. TURNING POINT But waiting for that time — any playing time, really — is never easy. Krzyzewski knows that, and he pulled Allen aside in early December 2014 to talk about it.
“He said, ‘ You’re not to wait for next year, not to just take this year off and see it as someone else’s turn,’ ” Allen says. “This is my year, and I can be a contributor to this team. It might not be in a big way, but I can contribute. From then on, I started to see spots where I could fill my role. The second half of the season, when we got into ACC play, I think it really clicked. I felt really confident out there, whether it was one minute or 10 minutes.”
Or, put another way: He was finally playing like himself. Earlier, in spot duty, Allen had put too much pressure on himself. He had tried to play perfectly.
“You get into the game, and you know you’re probably not going to be in there long,” Allen says. “It’s like, while I’m in here, I better not mess up. That’s the completely wrong mentality to have. That works against how I play, because how I play is 150%, going all out, going crazy. When I’m playing timid and afraid to make a mistake, then I’m not going to play well.”
Marshall Plumlee, Allen’s roommate, knows what it’s like to play sporadically and to come off the bench to spell someone else. He also knows Allen quite well.
“His work ethic throughout the year despite playing time was what impressed me the most about him,” Plumlee says. “Everyone at Duke is the best player coming from their respective high school programs. When you have so many great pieces on a team, sometimes there are only so many minutes in the game. Players can get discouraged, players can stop working as hard and players can transfer. But Grayson was just as determined from the beginning as he was at the end, and that’s something people from the outside looking in may not have been able to see. We saw it every day in practice.
“In my experience around players who are talented who haven’t gotten the chance to play, he kept the best attitude by far out of anyone I’ve been surrounded with at Duke.”
That attitude, like Allen’s altitude, will be even more important this season.