Duke basketball great Grayson Allen infuriates another ESPN pundit

Nowadays, some folks bash a Duke basketball treasure just for playing well.

On Wednesday night, Grayson Allen once again became a trending Twitter topic. This time, as has been the case in most such instances of late, the cause of the Duke basketball legend’s spike in mentions was simply his high-level performance.

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Of course, any success from the “villainous” shooting guard rubs many critics the wrong way.

The latest attack was from former UNC grad student Bomani Jones, one of several ESPN pundits who seem to find pleasure in spewing anti-Allen venom. His barrage of tweets — we’ll get to those here in a second — came after the third-year pro, now with the Memphis Grizzlies (10-10), scored 18 points off the bench during a 130-114 home win over the Charlotte Hornets (12-14).

Most of Allen’s damage came before the break. At the time, he led all scorers from both sides with 16 points, setting a season-high for Memphis with five 3-point makes in a single half. And that’s when his name began popping up all over social media, unsurprisingly sparking an array of profane insults toward the four-year Blue Devil.

Vicious tweets from the biased hater of all things Duke basketball

Sure, it was clear afterward that Grayson Allen’s hot hand in the first half ultimately fueled his squad’s franchise-record 23 splashes from beyond the arc in the game, getting the Grizzlies back on track following four straight losses. Nevertheless, Bomani Jones sanctimoniously suggested that Memphis fans should no longer stand for the 25-year-old being in town, period:

Jones wasn’t finished. No, he then began to personally disparage people who tried to stand up for Allen. Here are a couple of his messages to those expressing disagreement with his opinion (not showing the full tweets here due to the tossing around of F-bombs):

• “you gotta be a a-1 herb to put on your cape for grayson allen. i cannot imagine looking in the mirror after this.”
• “did you know there were grayson allen truthers? i did not.”

Even after perhaps trying to sleep off his rage, Jones remained visibly upset with the positivity from Allen’s supporters during the night. He blamed the pandemic:

Next, Jones became defensive:

Allen, who went No. 21 overall at the 2018 NBA Draft and is now teammates with fellow 2015 Duke basketball national champs Tyus Jones and Justise Winslow, is currently averaging career-highs with 8.9 points, 2.9 rebounds, and 1.9 assists in 22.0 minutes per contest. Also, adding in his 18-for-38 clip (47.4 percent) between his past six outings, he’s shooting 38.4 percent from deep.

The next chance for Grayson Allen to ruffle the feathers of Bomani Jones is at 10 p.m. EST Friday when Memphis visits the Los Angeles Lakers (20-6).

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