Gregg Doyel

gregg.doyel@indystar.com

INDIANAPOLIS – The downfall of Grayson Allen is fascinating and terrifying and sad, a modern-day tragedy that involves the most famous basketball player at one of the country’s biggest basketball schools – and us. We are part of this story because we are not just watching it but interacting with it, affecting it. This drama is being swayed by audience participation.

And before this story gets to the part where I confess something I’ve never confessed in print, this story will say the following:

Bravo, audience.

Well, up to a point. Audience participation forced Duke’s hand on Thursday morning, leading the most powerful coach in basketball at any level – five-time national champion, three-time Olympic champion, all-time NCAA victories leader Mike Krzyzewski of Duke – to suspend Grayson Allen indefinitely after his best player tripped Elon guard Steven Santa Ana on Wednesday night, the third time since February that Allen has tripped an opposing player.

Duke's Mike Krzyzewski suspends Grayson Allen indefinitely

Now, the audience needs to pipe down. Duke has heard the gods of public opinion and offered its sacrifice, suspending Allen 12 hours after a defiant Coach K had vowed to ignore our call for a pound of Allen’s flesh.

“I handle things the way I handle them,” Krzyzewski said after the game. “I don’t need to satisfy what other people think I should do. … It doesn’t mean you have to see (the punishment), or anybody else has to see it.”

We got what we wanted 12 hours later, a punishment the world can see. Will we be satisfied? No, probably not. It’s Duke, the most disliked program in America, so we will continue to storm on social media, forming a tsunami of hateful glee that Duke’s best player is being publicly eviscerated.

This is us – not all of us, but far too many of us – at our worst.

And to be clear, Grayson Allen deserves to be suspended. Three times in 25 games, he has tripped a competing player. It’s petulant, unsporting and more than a little dangerous. It’s ugly, it keeps happening, it has to stop.

But my heart is breaking today for him. Because I look at Duke’s most hated player, and I see more than Grayson Allen.

I see me.

* * *

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I hung up the phone, went to my back yard in Cincinnati and pounded my forehead against a tree until the blood was in my eyes.

Impulse control led me there in March 2011, bleeding and afraid. Impulse control looks to be Grayson Allen’s issue as well, impulse control triggered by frustration.

Look at his three tripping incidents. In early February, Allen tripped a Louisville player after going down in a heap under the basket without a foul called. A few weeks later he tripped a Florida State defender whose physicality had taken Allen off his game (7-for-20 from the floor). Wednesday night he tripped Santa Ana after the Elon sophomore drove past him; not coincidentally, Allen was having perhaps the worst offensive game (1-for-8, three points) of his career.

After being caught Wednesday night, Allen’s initial reaction was to lamely accuse Santa Ana of grabbing his arm. Moments later, sitting on the Duke bench, Allen was screaming and pounding the chair. Duke assistant Jon Scheyer, who took his turn from 2006-10 as America’s most hated (Duke) player, tried to calm him, but Allen was inconsolable.

He was me, pounding my head against that tree, terrified that I was throwing away my own career.

This was nearly six years ago. I was at CBSSports.com. Readers who knew me, they most likely knew me as a ranting, raving hot-take artist who was likely to write anything for CBS, say anything on the radio, tweet anything on Twitter. Readers accused me of playing a role, being the bad guy for attention. They thought I was pretending.

I wasn’t.

After a while, you get to feeling invincible. I’m guessing Grayson Allen is – or was – there. McDonald’s All American in high school, freshman hero of the 2015 Final Four in Indianapolis, sophomore All-American, junior player of the year candidate. You trip a guy, nothing happens. You trip another guy, nothing happens.

His trees are different from my trees, but the forest is the same. You get to feeling invincible. Try this baseball analogy: Behavior is a fastball, and the first one you throw is over the corner and called a strike. You throw the next one an inch outside, and it’s another strike. Pretty soon you’re throwing balls a foot outside and the umpire is leaning over and calling those strikes, too.

That was me at CBS, angry in life and expressing it at work. Write something outrageous. Go on the radio and say something a little more outrageous. Tweet something borderline libelous. Nothing happened. Far as I knew, I was throwing strikes.

Invincible. Until I went too far and beaned somebody.

On a radio station somewhere I said something awful about a sports figure in that market, and that market went nuts. The ruckus reached my boss, more than 1,000 miles away. My boss called me.

This wasn’t the first time I’d tripped someone. My boss had called me two or three times before, mostly laughing about how outrageous I was, but telling me not to do it again.

I didn’t hear ball. I heard strike. So I kept throwing fastballs. But this time, this last time, my boss wasn’t laughing. He was growling. Here's the sentence I remember:

If I have to call you like this again, I’ll fire you.

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* * *

Grayson Allen has a choice to make, and I’m pretty sure he already made it. That outburst Wednesday night on the sideline? Some see a tantrum, a spoiled brat lashing out at an unfair world.

I see someone scared, banging his head against a tree until it bleeds, furious at himself for doing it again – and terrified that he can’t stop.

You saw Allen after the game, I hope. Sitting in front of his locker, head down, no eye contact with reporters, shaking his head as he says: “I made a really bad play. I’m sorry to him, Santa Ana. I’m sorry to the officials who have to call that. I’m sorry to my team. It’s selfish and taking away from them. I’m, um, I’m not proud of it at all.”

And then Allen turns his head. He sounds as if he has been crying. He sounds as if he is about to cry some more. This didn’t look to me like remorse because he was caught. This looked like my head against that tree. This looked like remorse that he did it again, remorse mixed with self-loathing and fear that he can’t stop doing it.

I stopped doing it, by the way.

Took a few years before I could go on the radio and not worry about talking my way into unemployment. Finally got there, well before I came to IndyStar in October 2014, but it was not easy.

If I’m reading Allen right – and forgive the blatant armchair analysis here, but I’m pretty sure I know what I’m seeing – it won’t be easy for him, either. Whatever his issue, changes will have to be made. Clearly what he is doing now isn’t working, and he has so much to lose.

Allen has first-round NBA talent – CBSSports.com has Allen going 14th overall in the 2017 NBA draft, to the Indiana Pacers of all teams – but not so much talent that he can keep behaving like this. He’s like me in 2011: pretty good at what he does (OK, he’s a lot better at his career than I am at mine), but not so good that he’s invincible. He has to change.

If Allen is smart, he’s staying off the Internet today, but I’m hoping someone shows him this story. Change can happen, but only if he wants it badly enough. Scared of losing my ability to provide for my family, I changed. Saw a doctor, tweaked old habits, started new ones. I got there.

Grayson Allen can get there. You can, Grayson. You took your first step late Wednesday night. Take another step today. And another tomorrow. Little by little, you’ll get where you need to go.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atfacebook.com/gregg.doyel.