Duke Basketball Champ Grayson Allen Loses One Distinction in Phoenix
Grayson Allen led the NBA at 46.1 percent shooting from downtown as a full-time starter in his first season with the Phoenix Suns. Perhaps the 28-year-old Florida native’s premier 3-point touch and career-high 13.5 points per game played some part in the franchise stocking up on NBA Blue Devils via free agency over the summer.
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The Suns added veteran center Mason Plumlee, who won a national championship as a 2009-10 Duke basketball freshman, plus Allen’s 2014-15 national championship teammate in former one-and-done clutch floor general Tyus Jones.
Speaking of Jones, despite Allen’s surge in production for a Suns squad that finished 49-33 in the regular season, the 28-year-old Minnesota native is now set to be a starter in back-to-back campaigns after averaging 12.0 points, 7.3 assists, and 1.1 steals for the Washington Wizards while leading the league in assist-to-turnover ratio a sixth straight time.
Evidently, Phoenix head coach Mike Budenholzer looks to ramp up the starting unit’s speed a smidge by inserting Jones over Allen. He’ll keep the rest of last season’s lineup intact when the Suns tip off their 2024-25 campaign in three weeks.
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“Certainly, we feel like Tyus has established himself as a great starting point guard in our league,” Budenholzer recently told NBA.com’s Steve Aschburner, “and he will be our starter. When you put him out there with Kevin [Durant], Brad [Beal], [Devin Booker], and [Jusuf Nurkic], we feel like we’ve got a strong starting five. And a really strong bench behind them.”
That bench now includes Grayson Allen, of course, as well as the 34-year-old seasoned presence of potential backup center Mason Plumlee, who is gearing up for his 12th NBA season spanning seven franchises and is the oldest Duke basketball talent across all active rosters in the league.
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