The professor strode into Syracuse’s practice unannounced, and Allen Griffin knew he was in trouble.

It was fall 1997 and Griffin, a freshman from Brownsville, Brooklyn, watched Marlene Blumin approach Bernie Fine, whom she knew as a former classmate and Griffin knew as his head coach’s lieutenant. Griffin remembered Fine looking around until he saw Griffin looking back at him. Fine extended a pointer finger and beckoned. Come here now.

Griffin trudged over, and, once he was within reach, Fine put his hand on the back of Griffin’s head. In that moment, Griffin regretted not paying the proper respect to Blumin’s warning: Turn in your homework or I’ll come get it. Fine glared at Griffin as the point guard stammered through an explanation. In his next College Learning Strategies class, Griffin handed in his assignment.

“That established that I cared about him,” Blumin said recently. “After that, back then, he would come (into my office) if he felt lonesome.”

This spring, two unrelated things happened to make Griffin’s return to Syracuse as an assistant coach possible. Within a week in late March, longtime SU assistant Mike Hopkins departed to become the head coach at Washington and then Griffin’s boss at Dayton, Archie Miller, left for Indiana. This put Griffin in limbo, until Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim called. Griffin had tried to become a Syracuse assistant before, serving as the team’s director of basketball operations from 2003 to 2005, but Boeheim had recommended gaining assistant coaching experience elsewhere first.

In early April, Griffin replaced Hopkins as the big-man coach and understood the significance of joining a staff of alumni helmed by a 42-year head coach that had been a core for six straight seasons. Those relationships, like with Boeheim; fellow assistants Adrian Autry and Gerry McNamara; and Blumin, drew Griffin back to Syracuse. Coming into the fold, Griffin said, gives him “the opportunity to walk around with a little swag.” Taking this job, said his brother, Anthony Griffin, allowed him to share as a coach the lessons he learned as a player.

“I grew into a man here,” Griffin said. “(Syracuse) put a lot of things into perspective in terms of life for me. The relationships I built here…” He trailed off.

“I’ll be honest, I thank God every day that I’m back, and I’m not a Christian.”

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Coaching big men hasn’t bothered Griffin though he never was one himself. He felt like a coach on the floor in college and then, at Dayton, coaches worked with every position.

“Everybody makes a big deal about working with big guys,” Boeheim said. “The best guy I ever worked with at big guys was Pete Newell, he was a guard. He was the best big-guy coach that I’ve ever seen. Mike Hopkins was a guard, he was a great big-guy coach. Bernie Fine was a great big-guy coach. He didn’t play basketball. It’s kind of a myth to think, ‘Well you have to be big to coach big guys.’ I did it when I was here.

“It’s like you’ve got to be a bird to jump out of a plane.”

When Syracuse hired Griffin, he thought he would have three big men, but Taurean Thompson, the only one of the group who has played in an Atlantic Coast Conference game, transferred to Seton Hall. Griffin had looked forward to working with Thompson, because he had watched nearly all of Syracuse’s games from the season before and had seen the offensive potential. Now, Syracuse’s big men are the most unproven part of its roster, and the Orange will rely on Griffin to bring the unit along.

One of the first things Griffin did after he got the job was take his two remaining players — redshirt junior Paschal Chukwu and freshman Bourama Sidibe — out for pizza so they got to know each other. At first, they were both quiet, but as Griffin watched Sidibe and Chukwu in the gym they were “better than expected,” he said. In his fourth season, Chukwu seemed naturally more at ease in the college game than first-year Sidibe, who was more “wide-eyed.” Yet Sidibe’s athleticism and dunking ability has impressed Griffin and bolstered optimism in Boeheim’s plan to use each 20 minutes per game.

Going out for pizza, to Griffin, symbolized the way he’d always done things. The ability to cajole teammates and players stuck out to Griffin’s former teammates, and it doesn’t surprise his brother. As long as Anthony has known his brother, he’s seen him connect and communicate with other family members as well as he has with strangers who approach him when he’s out in town.

Recently, as the brothers ate together at one Griffin’s favorite spots in Syracuse, Attilio’s Restaurant, a fan mistook Anthony for his brother and gushed about how great it was having him back as a coach. The brothers played along for a few minutes before Allen, laughing, explained the mix-up.

When Griffin was a point guard, he sensed the differing needs of his big men Billy Celuck and Jeremy McNeill, so he tailored his approach to each player. Sometimes he went out for a beer or two with Celuck, because he knew that’s what Celuck liked to do. He gave mostly encouragement to McNeill, whom Griffin sensed was hesitant to trust.

“C’mon big Perm,” Griffin said quietly to McNeill when the team needed him.

“Me being a point guard,” Griffin said, “I had to learn how to deal with different personalities at one time (with Celuck and McNeill). I use that now to this day, especially with (Chukwu and Sidibe). … I’ve had a lot of hands-on training with centers, and the one thing I learned is this: They’re big gentle giants and you got to show them love, but you also got to put your foot up their butt if you need to.”

When Griffin criticizes Chukwu or Sidibe, he always tries to do so in a quieter voice, so they understand he wants them to get better and he’s not just yelling out of anger. He takes the same approach with his two sons, 18-year-old A.J. and 7-year-old Trey. And now, Griffin wants to be there for his players like those who were there for him when he was a student.

When he came to Syracuse, it was the first extended time away from his grandmother, who raised him because he hadn’t known his father and his mother died when he was about 7 years old. Griffin often went to Blumin’s office to talk throughout college. When his role on the team grew as a sophomore. When he was benched as a junior. When he started every game as a senior.

One day during that time, Griffin walked into Blumin’s office and sat on a chair that was next to a sofa. He picked up the Whee-lo, his favorite toy of the collection Blumin kept to help calm those who came to see her, the one where magnets inside a red plastic wheel propel it along two sides of a U-shaped metal track, in a way that sort of looks like gravity.

As Griffin spun the wheel back and forth, Blumin continued typing on her computer. Students often wandered in and out, so a few minutes passed before she looked up at Griffin. Then, she saw tears streaming down his face. She walked over, sat on the sofa and asked what was wrong. He couldn’t remember his mother’s voice. They sat together for a while in silence until Blumin suggested Griffin call his grandmother.

Last year, Blumin retired from SU. While cleaning out her office, she called several former students to see if they wanted anything. When she reached Griffin, he knew immediately.

Blumin boxed up the Whee-lo and addressed the package to Dayton, Ohio. A few days later, Griffin ripped open the package, sat down and spun the toy, he said, for the better part of two to three days. Then he put it on his desk and, as players visited his office throughout the season, some picked it up as they talked. Griffin hasn’t yet brought the Whee-lo to his new office, with its high glass windows overlooking the Melo Center. For now, he keeps it at his apartment, but it’ll be ready for anyone who might be in need.

Published on November 1, 2017 at 12:12 am

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