He fought through the pain and only sat out one game, but he wasn't the same player as last season. Later that month, though, he sustained a toe injury that forced him to miss a couple of weeks of practice. In early November, he received the most votes on the Associated Press's preseason All-American team. ![]() Now a junior, Allen is arguably the most high-profile player in the country and a veteran on a deep, skilled Duke team that is 11-1 and ranked fifth in the Associated Press poll. He had to embrace that he's white, but he can still play with us, he can still hang with us. He did need to kind of embrace being the white guy on the team and all that because it's basketball. "He had a lot of talent, but he did need to become tough. "He wasn't Grayson Allen or that type of college player when he first came to Duke," Winslow told VICE Sports. It took him a few weeks to adjust to his new surroundings. There's no other way to put it."Īt Duke, Allen joined a freshman class that included Jahlil Okafor, Justise Winslow, and Tyus Jones, each of whom would leave school after one year and became first-round NBA draft picks. It's hard for a black guy to accept a white guy playing like this.' I'm just being honest. We can't play like this.' I used to always be real with Grayson. There were times I would get hot and tell the ref, 'C'mon, man. "They would do little things like punch him and stuff, man. "Guys would foul him hard," Douglas said. By then, he was used to opponents heckling him. He emerged as a top recruit in the summer of 2012 heading into his junior year of high school, and when Duke offered him a scholarship the following spring, he quickly committed to play for his dream school. "I said, 'I've got to have him because I knew that whoever he was playing for and was coaching him had him in the wrong place and didn't know what to do with him.' I told the kids, 'I'm getting that kid right there.'"įor the next two years, Allen commuted between Jacksonville and Atlanta to play with Douglas's team, the Douglas Brothers Elite. "Let me tell you something, sir, I got so happy," Douglas said. "I don't have to be them, just find my own way to be a basketball player and focus on what we're doing here and not let anything become a distraction." "They just told me to keep being myself through it," Allen said. The Atlantic Coast Conference publicly reprimanded Allen, but the league did not suspend him.Īs the season wore on, Allen spoke with a few former Blue Devils who had faced similar ordeals. ![]() Later that month, he stuck out his left leg and tripped Florida State guard Xavier Rathan-Mayes with a few seconds remaining. First, Allen received a flagrant foul on February 8 after falling to the court and tripping Louisville forward Ray Spalding. He didn't help himself with a pair of tripping incidents that brought about accusations of dirty play. The wave of animosity crested last season, when Allen was Duke's top player, averaging a team-high 21.6 points per game and making the third-team Associated Press All-American team. Redick-Allen is just the latest in a long line of Duke players opponents love to hate. Read More: On Calipari's Kentucky, Hawkins and Willis Are the Rare Senior WildcatsĬhristian Laettner, Bobby Hurley, J.J. "My mom will tell me I don't look like him, but there's thousands of people telling me I do. "Those are pretty funny," he told VICE Sports.
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