USA TODAY International Edition
Allen remains compelling, controversial
DURHAM, N.C. – At her home in Jacksonville, Sherry Allen keeps a copy of Bobby Bear’s Three Wishes, a children’s book she read repeatedly to her son, Grayson.
The story goes that Bobby Bear, who hasn’t won much in his young life, wishes to win at everything, all the time. That wish is granted. But he wins so much that it starts to be no fun, because other kids don’t want to play with him anymore.
Sherry needed a way to connect with Grayson, a ferociously competitive little boy obsessed with winning. She and Grayson’s dad, William, first noticed a rabid desire to be No. 1 when Grayson was in kindergarten. While other kids scribbled and colored without inhibition, Grayson had to be perfect. If his crayon went outside the lines, he had a full-on meltdown. So Sherry grabbed
Bobby Bear’s Three Wishes, hoping to show Grayson that winning wasn’t always the ultimate.
It didn’t work.
“That book went right over Grayson’s head,” Sherry sighs. “He never got the message. He’s just wired differently. At the end of the book, when Bobby Bear wishes for things to go back to normal, Grayson thought Bobby was stupid — why would he not want to win?”
She laughs at the memory. Even now, she’s not sure her son would understand the message.
Allen is grown, the lone senior for Duke (26-7), the No. 2 seed in the Midwest, which opens NCAA tournament play Thursday vs. Iona.
He is the most polarizing player in college basketball who happens to play at one of the most polarizing programs in the country.
As the nation turns its attention to March Madness, casual and die-hard fans will view Allen, fairly or not, as an example of sportsmanship. He is best known for a series of immature tripping incidents that have put all of his actions under an intense microscope. In last week’s Atlantic Coast Conference semifinal against North Carolina, Allen was assessed a flagrant foul after hip-checking a defender in the open floor, sending him sprawling. With any other player on any other team, that play is likely shrugged off. With Allen, it’s replayed on SportsCenter again and again.
Adored in Cameron Indoor Stadium and vilified outside it, Allen is on the brink of his final NCAA tournament. As he has evolved from soft-spoken freshman to the leader Duke needs to reach its 17th Final Four, Allen is still asking the same question: How can someone want to do anything but win?
Into the spotlight
If you go to Duke, you love Duke. You love the winning, the Hall of Fame coach, the five national championships, the recruitment of McDonald’s All-Americans who hit big shots in the biggest moments and take pleasure in the way those shots torture opposing fans.
If you don’t root for Duke, you might find Duke endlessly obnoxious.
Allen epitomizes that narrative. A freshman in 2014-15, he was the most unheralded newcomer on a roster stocked with one-and-done players, a painfully shy point guard who averaged nine minutes per game. But it was Allen who came into the 2015 title game against Wisconsin and scored eight points in a row, finishing with 16 and helping Duke to its fifth national championship. Mike Krzyzewski describes Allen’s Final Four run as “storybook.”
Less than a year later, Allen became the most hated player in college basketball — and maybe the most hated player in Duke’s storied history, which is saying something.
On Feb. 8, 2016, vs. Louisville, Allen fell after a missed layup and reached out with his foot to trip Cardinals forward Ray Spalding, who grabbed the rebound. Officials hit Allen with a flagrant foul, and a new Duke villain was born.
Assistant coach Jon Scheyer recalls that Allen often got so heated at practice during his freshman year that he frequently got into fights. “He was so aggressive and competitive that (former guard) Justise Winslow would lose it with him,” Scheyer says. “They’d get into it all the time.”
Coaches loved Allen’s ruthlessly competitive edge but reminded him to harness that passion.
Allen struggled to do that. On Feb. 25, 2016, he made headlines again, tripping Florida State’s Xavier Rathan-Mayes.
The ACC reprimanded Allen, and Krzyzewski encouraged everyone to “move on.” Fast-forward one season, and Allen got caught a third time, tripping Elon’s Steven Santa Ana in a nonconference game Dec. 22, 2017. The following day, Krzyzewski suspended Allen indefinitely; it turned out to be one game. Allen quickly became public enemy No. 1. Opposing fan bases taunted him on the road with signs and chants and attacked him on social media, accusing him of being an entitled, immature brat but worse. ESPN’s Jay Williams, himself a former Blue Devils All-American, criticized Krzyzewski for not suspending Allen longer. On ESPN’s
SportsNation, outspoken host Michelle Beadle said someone needed to “knock (Allen) out.”
The last comment appalled Sherry and William Allen — how could someone say that about their child? Grayson could tell it bothered Sherry and told her they should pity anyone who would be so malicious. Still, it nagged at Sherry. For weeks, she and William watched games with the television muted, unable to listen to people who had never met Grayson disparage him and question his character. Sherry had barely gotten used to the mob of fans who descended on Grayson after a big win. Now she had to navigate a mob of anonymous trolls who devoured him online?
When Duke visited Florida State on Jan. 10, 2017, Sherry got her “first taste of a truly hostile crowd.” It sickened her. The next day, she got a call from from Krzyzewski. He had missed the FSU game because of back surgery but wanted to check on mom and dad. What he said still resonates with Sherry.
“Coach K told me, ‘Grayson is OK; he’s handling (the criticism). What Grayson is not going to be OK with is Mom not being OK,’ ” Sherry recalls. She knew then she had to rein in the “protective mama bear.” She and William did not think it appropriate to get involved from a disciplinary perspective either, instead trusting Krzyzewski and his staff to take care of things.
But she did ask her son a question: “You need to figure out why you are doing this,” she told Grayson. “What is the impulse that triggers you, competitively, to cross the line?”
Final run
Allen understands that, for some college basketball fans, his reputation has been damaged beyond repair. What he also knows is that right now, leading this tremendously young team matters more than noise from critics.
“The thing that you don’t understand about college basketball until you’re one or two seasons in — and something I’ve struggled with — is that you have to be 100% connected to your other four guys on the court at all times,” Allen says. “That takes extreme focus. Something like missing a shot, and the next play you’re thinking about it, or you give up a play on defense and you’re thinking about it, you’re frustrated about it, what’s happening is that you’re really thinking about yourself. You’re not connected to the team. And you have to be connected or those few plays add up.”
In each of his tripping incidents, Allen says, he lost focus. He became so consumed with an individual battle, thinking of himself and how he wanted to “get back” at someone, that he let frustration take over. Each of those incidents was “definitely embarrassing,” he says, because his competitive edge hurt Duke instead of helping it.
On the eve of his final NCAA tournament, Allen is not motivated to win another title simply because it might help erase the lows of what he calls “a roller coaster four years.”
“I don’t feel a need to prove anything or rewrite my legacy,” says Allen, who’s projected anywhere from a late firstround pick to mid second-round pick in the NBA draft in June. “When I’m done, I have a national championship. I would really love to win a second, to go out on top with this group, but I don’t feel a need to prove anyone wrong or change anyone’s opinion.”