Duke Basketball: What does Grayson Allen’s suspension mean for Duke?

Duke basketball opted to suspend Grayson Allen indefinitely after he intentionally tripped an opponent.

After Grayson Allen intentionally tripped an opponent for the third time in two seasons, Duke opted to take immediate action before the ACC had to step in.

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On Thursday morning, Mike Krzyzewski and Duke suspended Allen indefinitely following his trip on Elon’s Steven Santa Ana.

“We have had the opportunity to thoroughly review the incident involving Grayson Allen from last night’s game against Elon,” Mike Krzyzewski said in a statement released by Duke. “As I stated last night, the incident was unacceptable and inexcusable. He took an important step last night by apologizing in person to Steven Santa Ana and Coach Matt Matheny. As a program, we needed to take further steps regarding his actions that do not meet the standards of Duke Basketball. To that end, we have determined that Grayson will be suspended from competition for an indefinite amount of time.”

This an awfully different tune from what Coach K was singing after the team’s victory last night. In fact, the Hall of Famer made it sound as if there was almost no chance of him suspending Allen for the incident.

But after reviewing the play, Coach K had to see how similar this was to the other two incidents, how Allen wasn’t remorseful at the time and how he went back to the bench and pouted instead of keeping his cool.

Maybe this suspension will help Allen correct his issues, or maybe it won’t. But at least Allen will be forced to take a step back and view the game from a different perspective. Maybe he will realize that his poor sportsmanship and behavior will not be tolerated no matter how good of a basketball player he is.

Duke doesn’t play until December 31 against Virginia Tech before hosting the two worst teams in the conference, Georgia Tech and Boston College. The Blue Devils can certainly win all three of these games without Allen. However, this becomes a distraction for his teammates moving forward.

Allen’s tripping is going to overshadow Duke’s results on the court. For example, people have overlooked the fact that the Blue Devils have struggled with two straight low major opponents, Tennessee State and Elon.

And then there were the comments that Luke Kennard made after the game last night that completely flew off the radar.

This puts into perspective how difficult it is to mold multiple five-star recruits together with talented returning players. What John Calipari does year after year at Kentucky gets taken for granted sometimes, but you almost never hear his players comment negatively about the team’s chemistry.

This doesn’t mean that Duke isn’t going to win the National Title or that there are major problems within the program, but Allen’s tripping certainly adds to the issues that Duke is already having. Harry Giles and Marques Bolden are playing only limited minutes and haven’t made an impact. The team has looked anything but impressive in the last two games. And Frank Jackson has been relatively quiet as of late.

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Duke will be fine (this is likely just a mid-season bout of adversity). However, everyone must get healthy, Allen can’t continue to cause distractions and Jackson has to pick up his production.