Only one person has to like you. One damn person.

How tough can it be? Where is he? How long will it take to find him?

One person, that’s what Allen Griffin wants. One person outside of Syracuse University who believes he’s fit for the NBA.

Let’s start with this because, Griffin’s already seen more endpoints than starting lines since leaving SU 18 months ago. That one person is not in Dallas or New Jersey … he’s not in Brooklyn … he’s certainly not in Slovenia.

What about Asheville, N.C.? That’s where Griffin, 24, departed for Nov. 1, leaving behind the Syracuse men’s basketball team that he’d practiced with all preseason, leaving behind a city of supporters, leaving behind a past that, since graduation, has steered Griffin toward nothing but NBA dead ends.

Now, Griffin is one of 24 hopefuls trying out for the Asheville Altitude of the National Basketball Development League. His hopes for making the team — and playing well enough to jump toward the NBA — are preserved with rote reassurances. After all, how tough can it be?

‘One person,’ Griffin said.

Ready or not, here he comes.

***

Most years, the Syracuse basketball team loses several players. Transfers, suspensions, graduations.

Allen Griffin graduated in May 2001. He got married the same month. He was out the door, out of Syracuse, and then suddenly — whoa! — his life smacked into a reset button.

After getting tryouts with the National Basketball Associations’s New Jersey Nets and Dallas Mavericks, Griffin was back at Syracuse working out with the team he thought he’d left for good. Until two weeks ago — excluding stints in a European League and in the United States Basketball League — Griffin continued to live and practice basketball in Syracuse. Still in Manley Field House. Still lifting and running, just like he did two years earlier.

‘Sometimes I kind of feel too old for the college life,’ Griffin said. ‘Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. But I’ve been here so long — my friends are two years, three years gone. I’m just hangin’ around, hangin’ around.’

But Griffin’s version of hangin’ still shackles him to a daily regimen of hard work. Before leaving for Asheville, Griffin rose every morning for an hour of heavy lifting. Prior to joining the current Orangemen for practice around 3:30 p.m., the 6-foot-1 point guard generally spent an hour tuning his shot with the rebounding help of a team manager.

‘I really do admire his spirit,’ Griffin’s wife, Tiffany, said. ‘There’s nobody standing over him saying, ‘Time to get up and work out.’ He does it on his own. Some people would think he’s just wasting his time or his effort is futile, but regardless of the circumstances, he just keeps on going.’

He just keeps searching for that one person, with determination that’s both a blessing and a curse, both admirable and pitiable. Should he give up on basketball if it only brings repeated failures? Or can failure be outworked? Can it be denied?

During Griffin’s SU playing days, he got by with a thin coating of talent but a sturdy base of resolve and work ethic. Griffin’s now wondering if the same formula might someday work for the NBA.

‘Sometimes, you have to persevere in all those BS leagues — the Puerto Rican league, the Turkish league — before you get your chance,’ SU assistant Mike Hopkins said. ‘But the key is, you have to keep improving. You have to improve your jump shot, get stronger, become smarter. I know that after a while, if things don’t go your way, you tend to lose a little confidence. You tend to start working out less. You might sleep in a little more.’

Not Griffin. Couldn’t happen to Griffin. He’s too reliable. He’s the guy who gutted St. John’s for a career-high 31 points — including 17 in two overtime periods — in his final regular-season game in 2001. He’s the guy who lost his starting job as a junior, yet regained it a year later.

It’s not the work ethic that might fail. Griffin said he’s giving himself from three to five years to make the NBA or obtain a stable basketball job elsewhere. Until then, keep working.

‘One of the things that Allen had to work on was his shooting,’ said Kenneth Charles, head coach of the USBL’s Brooklyn Kings and an NBA guard in the 1970s. ‘He had the intensity. He had the work ethic. But he needs a shot. To play in the NBA, you need a shot that can be relied upon. It doesn’t have to be great, but it should be something you can hit 50 percent of the time.’

For several months just last year, Griffin played with the Kings, a team in his hometown. He wasn’t there for long.

‘I tell people right away,’ Charles said. ‘You’re not going to be a career USBL player because there aren’t any.’

Neither could Griffin find a permanent career in Slovenia, where he played on a team called Union Olympia. He joined the squad last December and left this March when his contract expired and wasn’t renewed.

So he came back to the United States, where most coaches say the convenience makes it easier for NBDL and USBL players to earn 10-day contracts in the NBA. In Slovenia, though, Griffin made $8,000 per month — comparable to what some American minor-league players make in a half-year.

Other factors made life in Slovenia uneasy.

‘The thing that stands out about Slovenia, it’s very homogeneous,’ said Tiffany, who visited Griffin there for a month. ‘Being a person of color there, you really stick out. People would walk down the street and just point at him.’

Griffin left Europe, returned to his wife and his modest apartment five minutes beyond South Campus and began working for his next chance.

It’s now come in the form of the NBDL tryout. The motivation? A yearly contract anywhere between $12,000 and $30,000 depending on a player’s ability.

Asheville Altitude head coach Joey Meyer has roughly two weeks to pare 14 players from the roster and begin the season with the mandated 10-man team. Griffin is competing against notable former collegians such as Georgetown’s Lee Scruggs and USC’s Jeff Trepagnier.

‘It’s hard to tell how well he’s playing after just a couple days,’ Meyer said, ‘but Allen’s been playing real hard so far, and that’s all you can ask. I tell guys, ‘Just try to make my job (of cutting people) difficult by working hard.’ Allen’s certainly going to make it difficult on me.’

Said Griffin: ‘If I don’t make the team this time, I will not work out with the (Syracuse basketball) team any more. Now they’ve got games coming up, and I don’t want to involve myself with that. I’d just feel like a weight.’

Instead, he’ll search for another opportunity. Maybe in Europe. Maybe in another developmental league. Maybe just through more solitary mid-morning workouts and afternoon shootarounds.

‘It’s very difficult to make it (to the NBA),’ SU head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘And it’s tough to see guys who are close but might not fall in there.’

***

Griffin never wants to give up basketball. And he might not have to.

By tutoring young SU point guards like Billy Edelin and James Thues during the past two preseasons, Griffin has established himself as a capable coach. The steadfast dedication … the resolute optimism … the ability to motivate others … Griffin has the characteristics and the charisma.

‘I tell Allen all the time,’ Hopkins said, ‘that if I ever get a head-coaching job, he’d be a great candidate for me. I can see him being a great recruiter, and I’ve already seen how well he handles teaching kids. Some day from now, he’ll be a coach.’

Griffin agrees, but he’s not ready. He still wants to find the coach who likes him. He doesn’t want to be the coach. Not yet.

‘Basically, basketball consumes him,’ Tiffany said.

So give Griffin a couple more years. Let basketball consume him until he either meets his NBA matchmaker or realizes, ready or not, that such a person doesn’t exist.

‘I’m a survivor,’ Griffin said. ‘You know, if one guy doesn’t like me, somebody else might like me. I’ll just keep going and keep going until my body can’t take it no more.’

Published on November 13, 2002 at 12:00 pm