Grayson Allen

The Bulls started off Game 4 stronger than the previous game, feeding off the energy from the fans inside an energized United Center. However, Milwaukee never ...

He discarded defenders at will on his way to the rim, and flexed his strength with every tough finish. When he wasn't barreling his way to the basket, he was drawing two defenders inside the paint and showed off his passing skills with well-placed dimes all afternoon. Compare that to the 35 points Milwaukee got from its bench in Sunday's win in addition to the 33 points from reserves in Game 3 and you can see the blatant disparity. This has been a general storyline for the Bulls all season, relying heavily on DeRozan, LaVine and Vucevic and living with the results. Though he's started to embrace it with the Bucks this season. "I would still say that it's not naturally comfortable for me, but I am to the point now where -- I mean anytime I go out and play basketball, I just remind myself to have fun with it," Allen said. Then in the second quarter, he provided great help defense on DeRozan and forced him to cough up the ball. The win puts the Bucks up 3-1 in the series, with the opportunity to close things out on Wednesday at home. After dropping 22 points in Game 3, Allen once again torched the Bulls to the tune of a 27-point performance. Giannis Antetokounmpo led the Bucks with 32 points in the win, while reserve guard Grayson Allen came up big off the bench for the second-straight game with 27 points. Allen, who has received a wealth of boos from Bulls fans every time he touches the ball stemming from a hard foul he laid on Chicago guard Alex Caruso early in the season, has thrived in the hostile environment that Chicago fans created in the past two games. Who could've predicted that after All-Star forward Khris Middleton went down in Game 2, that Allen would be the one to step up in his absence?

Allen came off the bench to score 27 points in 28 minutes and help give the Bucks a commanding 3-1 lead in the NBA first-round playoff series.

Even his own teammates were booing him. The Bucks were plus-23 when Allen was on the floor in Game 4. Bulls fans were quite displeased with Allen in January after his flagrant foul broke the wrist of Bulls guard Alex Caruso.

Grayson Allen has been the Chicago Bulls achilles heel in their first two home games in their first round series against the Milwaukee Bucks.

After the play, Allen was seen laughing on the sideline prior to being ejected. Allen was seen laughing after the fact. That energy quickly faded as Allen went to work on the Bulls.

Grayson Allen entered a hostile environment at United Center but proceeded to set back-to-back playoff career highs as the Bucks took both games in Chicago.

Allen rebounded after going 0-for-4 from 3 to start the series in the first two games. "He's played amazing, maybe we got to boo him even more," Antetokounmpo said with a smile after the game. But it's not like we're going out there saying, 'That guy can't beat us.' The Milwaukee Bucks can't beat us and he's part of their team. Chicago had waited five years for a home playoff game here, and the fans' reward was a weekend of uncompetitive basketball. Allen went 10-of-12 from the field on Sunday, including 6-of-7 from 3-point range, to outscore Chicago's bench all by himself 27-17. ... Obviously, we know what happened [with the Caruso injury]. At the end of the day, it's basketball too. The Bulls downplayed any lingering animosity toward Allen leading up to the series, but fans at the United Center have not let it go as easily, responding with loud boos each time Allen approached the scorer's table or touched the ball on offense each game this season. They booed Allen when he walked onto the team bus. "It's not naturally comfortable for me," Allen said. They booed him when he arrived in the lobby of their team hotel. I'm not going out searching for it." "I think it's honestly hilarious.

Milwaukee Bucks guard Grayson Allen is not a very popular man in Windy City after injuring Chicago Bulls guard Alex Caruso.

He was heavily booed by the fans of the Bulls throughout the game, but he has learned to tune them out. The Bulls won’t be laughing when they hear that, especially since Caruso is a well-loved guy. He shot 10-of-12 from the field, including 6-of-7 from beyond the arc.

The Milwaukee Bucks have been dominating the Chicago Bulls in Game 4 today. But the surprise hero of the game has been Grayson Allen.

It’s been a long and winding road for Grayson Allen in his NBA career to say the least. Now he’s proving his worth to the Bucks where it really counts: The playoffs. But the surprise hero of the game thus far has been Grayson Allen.

The Milwaukee Bucks drown out the opposing fan boos with their own for teammate Grayson Allen.

They’ve kind of turned it in to a fun thing; it makes hearing it out there during the game a lot easier too because they think it’s so funny.” “He’s got both good feet and good hands,” said Budenholzer. “He’s athletic — but he’s shifty. “I think he likes that more than the cheers.” Which probably drowned out a real “(Bleep) you, Grayson Allen” from a fan behind the Bucks basket at the end of the game. The heckling. Budenholzer said Allen’s ability to play beyond shooting threes has added texture and depth to Milwaukee’s offensive schemes. Kind of like the annoying friend in the group that everyone keeps around because they’ll be the designated driver? The booing. CHICAGO – Grayson Allen will have to accept the boos in Chicago forever. Like, he’s got to take that picture and frame it. But what’s interesting is this: how will Allen handle the good-natured booing … from his own team? From the bench.

Considering his sizzling performances while hearing boos from his Milwaukee Bucks teammates, maybe even Duke basketball fans should be booing Grayson Allen.

During the regular season, Grayson Allen averaged a career-high 11.5 points per game, starting all but five of his 66 appearances. “Someone showed me a picture when he had the and-one in Game 3, and the whole bench was booing him. Now, the former No. 21 overall draft pick is the first Milwaukee player in history to record at least five made 3-pointers in back-to-back playoff games. It’s all the time…I think it’s funny. And the odd tactic is working to perfection. But the boos never came from his teammates.

That year's Kentucky roster featured future All-NBA talent in Devin Booker and Karl-Anthony Towns plus a whopping seven other players who made the league. Oh, ...

It does make it a whole lot harder: the 2016 Cavs managed to win as the lower seed with a home loss in the NBA Finals. Of course, they had generational star, but so does this Bucks team. As we should recognize after multiple playoff successes and failures by the Bucks (the second round series against Boston in 2019, the East Finals against Toronto that same year, the first round series against Orlando in the 2020 bubble, the second round series against Brooklyn in 2021, and most importantly, the 2021 NBA Finals) tenor of a seven-game NBA series cannot nor should not be judged on the outcomes of games one and two. However, that reality does not preclude Allen from becoming a flamethrower, nor does it preclude the Bucks’ ability to win the series despite dropping a home game. As if a loss to Chicago, whom the Bucks had beaten in 12 of their prior 13 matchups, was an utter disaster. This was a bang-bang play and Allen was punished more than appropriately (in my opinion excessively) with an ejection and a suspension: it’s not hard to assume that had this not been committed by Allen and instead by a player with no such reputation, it would have been merely a flagrant-1. Game 2 was rough from the start and while the end result was respectable thanks to a decent second half, the loss of Middleton to a sprained MCL for multiple weeks loomed as big as the L itself. This brought many haters among the Bucks fanbase out of the woodwork and comments sections on this site were swarmed with bitter Bulls fans ready to call us out as accessories to murder for continuing to support a player from our favorite team, to say nothing of the vitriol on Twitter. Angry takes like suspending Allen for the length of Caruso’s injury (laughably unprecedented), expelling Allen from the league, or throwing him in jail flew from talk-radio big mouths and tweet warriors. With his rookie contract a year from expiration and needing to preserve cap flexibility for their other, more important young players, the Grizzlies moved him in the offseason to the Bucks for the piddly price of Sam Merrill and two second-round picks. To be clear, it is awful that Caruso was injured and Allen deserved a flagrant foul, but to say that this was Allen’s intention is ludicrous. More and more dropped their grudges from the national title game, a grudge reinforced by the shoves and trips in the ensuing years. His sharpshooting carried over from college and he was a reliable offensive option for a young team scraping into the postseason, even joining the starting lineup for 38 of his 50 games. The culmination of this was in 2015: the Badgers achieved their first-ever number one seed, took out Arizona again (after besting the 1-seeded Wildcats in the Elite Eight the year before for their first Final Four since 2000), setting up a rematch with a Kentucky squad who squeaked past the Badgers by a single point one year prior to make the national title game.

After losing their second-leading scorer for the rest of the series, Grayson Allen has stepped up big time for the Milwaukee Bucks through two games.

Allen played with very active hands in the first half of Game 4 and picked up three steals in quick succession. I still like the decision to swap him and Wesley Matthews in the starting lineup so that Allen can come in and have more of the offense run for him. He’s always been more than a spot-up shooter and we only really get to see that when one or two of the big three are out and his role expands.