Grayson Allen makes peace with being Grayson Allen

On March 10, in the midst of the ACC tournament, against Duke's archrival, Grayson Allen missed a jumper. When the rebound was corralled for a potential fast break in the other direction, Allen responded with a hip check of North Carolina's Garrison Brooks. It was so incidental to the action that the referees initially missed the call and the Tar Heels scored on the other end anyway.

All of this would've been less than a footnote in the game had the name Grayson Allen, a player vilified for tripping opponents, not been attached. Instead, Allen was assessed a Flagrant 1, Twitter went insane, and every basketball fan who was not also a Duke fan immediately became enraged at Allen all over again.

And after it was all over, Allen was asked about his latest transgression and provided a response that, from any other player, would've seemed reasonable.

"They got a fast break," Allen said. "I bumped him, and I fouled him."

That is the unassailable truth of what happened. But it ignores all the context, and the fact is, as Allen's distinguished career at Duke draws to a close, he will be remembered not for the literal impact he had on his team or his sport but for the context.

To be sure, no one understands this more than Allen. He has made peace with the inevitability that others will define him without ever knowing him. However you see Allen now is probably how you'll always see him, no matter whether he wins a second national title this season or not.

The question Allen had entering his final year at Duke wasn't about the world's perception of him, though. After three years of trial and error, growth and regression, Allen hoped his last year at Duke would help him define himself.

"You learn a lot when you go through tough stuff," Allen said, "and I've learned exactly who I am."

It's ironic that most fans will remember Allen's career for the moments when he wasn't thinking -- when he reacted, instinctively, in the heat of the moment -- because outside of the competition on the court, Allen is not a reactionary. He is as considerate and introspective as any high-profile athlete his age.

Take, for example, gun control. This is a tough topic to discuss, of course, but as Allen sat at a microphone for a news conference last week amid a national walkout by high school students arguing for stricter gun laws, Allen was asked for his opinion, too.

"I think there's obviously a problem when you see so much violence in your country," he said. "As far as picking something to change, I'm honest and open enough to say I don't know. But something has to change, something we do as people, something we do as a country, because there is so much violence, so much of it affecting families."

There was no ego in his response, no overt politicization and no hedging his bets. He was honest and emotional and heartfelt. This is the same kid who routinely trips opponents and enrages a nation of basketball fans?

Another example is Allen's perspective on his midseason struggles this year. It was an odd dynamic from the beginning. Allen was the unquestioned leader of Duke's team -- the lone captain and senior on the roster -- yet he's most assuredly not the most talented member of the Blue Devils' arsenal. If anything, perhaps Allen thought too much about that dichotomy.

"My confidence was only there in spurts," he said. "It's a tough balance, and really I was just trying to get a lot of these guys involved early on. ... We have an extremely talented offensive group. Sometimes it's easy to think guys are going to knock down shots. For me, it's about keeping hunting my shot. Coaches have talked to me about that."

Even as a senior, Allen is a work in progress, a player -- and person -- still looking for the right balance. That, in part, is why he returned to Duke this year. It was his safe space, where he could keep working through all these internal debates.

Now talk to Allen about his reputation. This is where you get real insight into his personality.

The familiar comparison, because this is Duke, is J.J. Redick. They both earned the scorn of opposing fans, but Redick relished it. Allen is the opposite. He hates attention. As a freshman, he was so introverted that teammates had to drag him out with them to socialize. He simply wasn't comfortable being noticed. Now the court was turning into a metaphorical therapist's couch, where the entire basketball-watching public was eager to analyze him.

"If you booed [Redick], he played good," Allen said. "If you booed him louder, he played even better. And if you cussed him and that stuff, he'd walk off the court with a win. I respect the heck out of that, but I've never thrived off the booing. I don't want to talk to the crowd. For me, it was dealing with it in my own way, and I'm still figuring that out."

Players aren't supposed to admit their confidence can be shaken, or that boos and jeers and taunts can rattle them. But that's Allen. He's not comfortable talking to crowds or sitting in front of a horde of cameras. He just wanted to play basketball and win and go home.

And so when he tripped Louisville's Ray Spalding and Florida State's Xavier Rathan-Mayes and Elon's Steven Santa Ana, he was both doing something instinctive and setting himself up for a future that was utterly anathema to his worldview. It got Allen a one-game suspension, but a chance to learn.

"There are things that you see or the public see, and there are things that you all don't see and shouldn't see or shouldn't be talked about, and they're called teachings," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski told Jay Bilas at the time of the suspension. "You don't need to teach out in the public all the time."

All of that forced Allen to look for some inner peace, for clarity inside his locker room and inside his own head rather than relying on someone else to let tell him he was good enough. It was the emotional equivalent of Tyus Jones and Justise Winslow forcing him to go out to dinner with them as freshmen. Allen wasn't ready, but he did it anyway.

"I learned that I'm not a naturally self-confident person," Allen said. "But it's learning that a lot of my confidence comes from stuff I've been through. Even off the court, if I've gone through a crowd of 10,000, 15,000 people yelling 'F you' to me, I think I can go into Chipotle and order my own food."

At the ACC's annual media event to open basketball season, Allen was Duke's lone representative, and the questions he faced were, of course, familiar. It didn't take long for the first inquiry about his mental state entering the season. Would he avoid trouble in his senior season?

Allen demurred from anything close to a definitive answer, which, strangely, seemed to quell the interrogation.

Later, a reporter asked Allen why he hadn't answered the question more forcefully.

"Because whenever I answer yes or no to that question," he said, "that's the headline of the whole press conference."

There's a level of media savvy there that comes from spending too much time in the glare of the spotlight, but the attention wasn't Allen's complaint. He understands the scrutiny. It's just that every question about him is a question not asked about his team, and this year, his primary role was to avoid being the center of attention. He's surrounded by four burgeoning stars, and they're the priority.

"It puts a lot on my plate to try to prepare these guys," Allen said of his leadership role on this Duke team. "You really have to expand your focus to not only yourself but making sure all of these guys are OK."

If Allen sounds a bit like a new parent, that's probably a fair analogy. We learn from our mistakes, and we do our best to keep our kids from making the same ones. That's essentially his job this year, and he has done it spectacularly well.

When Trevon Duval struggled running the point, Allen stepped in, brought calm to the offense and managed never to kill the freshman's confidence when doing it.

When Marvin Bagley III went down with an injury, missing three weeks, Allen emerged as an offensive force, putting together his most prolific run of scoring of the season.

When Krzyzewski switched to a zone defense in hopes of finding some answers to the Blue Devils' struggles, it was with Allen in mind. Put the leader, the veteran, at the top of the defense and watch the rest of the pieces fall into place. Allen got his team talking, responding, improving.

"An upperclassman, unless they're a pretty solid guy, they could say, 'Hey, what about me?'" Krzyzewski said. "And Grayson has never done that."

That is not to say Allen has receded into the shadows. As he has worked to avoid the outside scrutiny, he has opened himself up to the team around him. In some ways, that's been far more difficult for the kid who never saw himself as the life of the party.

"It's been huge all year for him to give even more of himself," Krzyzewski said. "I think Grayson, over the last few weeks, has gotten even better, because he knows that his team has matured. We're not that young group that we were in November or December, even January."

Maturity. It's the perfect lesson for Allen to pass along.

Allen relaxes by playing video games. This is not surprising. He's young, introverted and competitive. The problem is, just as he found himself pushing a bit too hard on the court, he'd do the same in the midst of a particularly epic game of "Call of Duty," and the next thing he knew, he'd be trading insults with a squeaky-voiced kid who had no idea that, on the other end of an internet connection, was one of the most recognizable players in college basketball.

"I don't put the headset on anymore," Allen said last fall. "I realized it's a bunch of 13-year-olds, and it gave me some perspective, because that used to be me."

Used to be.

OK, the butt check might suggest that, for all of Allen's self-actualization, there is still some small bit of that 13-year-old in him, and perhaps there always will be. Maybe that's his edge.

"I look at Grayson as a fantastic competitor, a guy that wants to win and loses himself in the game," said Roy Williams, coach of rival North Carolina. "Yeah, he's been criticized for some of that stuff, but I've enjoyed competing against him."

The thing about that competitiveness, however, is that it's impossible to lead if you've lost the way.

There were those who wondered whether Allen's eagerness to move beyond his reputation might've diminished his killer instinct, particularly as he struggled through a midseason stretch when he seemed tentative. Allen brushed off those concerns, but there is a balance he needed to find, a way to harness that aggression rather than ignoring it or submitting to it.

That's what this year has really been about for Allen. His experience has translated to wisdom, and he's now forced to articulate that wisdom to four freshmen who might just help him win another national title.

Duke is four wins from a title, playing some of its best basketball of the season at the perfect time. This is the end of Allen's journey, and all those challenges have armed him with the tools he needs to finish things off on his terms.

"I'm a better basketball player," Allen said. "I'm more well-rounded. Leadership has affected my game in a ton of positive ways."

That's not how he'll be remembered by a lot of people. But college, Allen said, is the place where kids grow up, and that's what he has done in the past four years. He's not a perfectly refined version of himself, but that was never the goal. It's been about small steps forward and an acceptance of the path still ahead. And maybe, with a victory over Syracuse on Friday and three more victories after that, the narrative really will shift. Maybe in the midst of a massive corruption scandal that has rocked the sport, Allen's zealousness will seem quaint in comparison, and his ultimate success will become a story of maturation and redemption.

Or maybe not. The beauty of this final run is that Allen will be OK either way.

"It's becoming more comfortable with myself, with who I am," Allen said. "I'm kind of at peace."