Jamie Rhodes-USA TODAY Sports
Before athletes become brands they are a lot like regular folk. They too put on their pants one leg at a time, use multiple layers of toilet paper and have favorite teams for which they root. Duke Blue Devils commit, Grayson Allen, cheered for the team in which he is about to join. In fact, he always claimed Duke was where he wanted to go — even if they didn’t know it at the time.
NewsOberserver has a wonderful article up about Allen’s story and how he wanted to go play for the Blue Devils. In the article, it talked about Allen wanting to play for Duke. It was his dream destination and that folks would cold-call the athletic department so they would be aware of Allen’s abilities.
A lot of that was done well before Allen was a known recruit. Now a four-star prospect, Allen used other program’s offerings of scholarships the only way he wanted to — to get Duke to pay more attention to him.
It is not as rare as you think that a player would chase a school rather than the other way around. Another former Blue Devil Sean Dockery took the scenic route to dress up for the program. Dockery could have played for nearly any team in the country, but wanted to go to Duke so bad that he risked being a role player for life as well as battling schoolwork to the points of nausea instead. Dockery’s persistence paid off as he ended up being a vital part to Duke teams as well as earning a special spot in program lore.
With Allen set to join the program he always wanted to join and he seemingly being a perfect fit for “Duke basketball”, I think I can hear Disney calling the Allen family for the rights to the movie already. For Allen, however, his story is honestly just beginning.
Joe is a Senior Writer for Rant Sports. Follow him on Twitter @JosephNardone
