{"id":182751,"date":"2025-07-20T04:30:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T04:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/182751\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T04:30:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T04:30:11","slug":"former-grizzlies-star-tony-allen-inducted-in-tennessee-sports-hall-of-fame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/182751\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Grizzlies star Tony Allen inducted in Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tony Allen, who spent seven of his 14 NBA seasons with the Memphis Grizzlies<\/a> and became a legendary figure known as the “The Grindfather,”<\/a> grew up in Chicago, but he calls Tennessee his home.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been here for 15 years now. My family is here and I’ll be raising my kids here,” he said. “Tennessee is tied to the other ‘T’ in Tony Allen.”<\/p>\n

Now, he is forever cemented<\/a> in the state’s history as a member of the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame, inducted during a ceremony July 19 at the Omni Nashville Downtown.<\/p>\n

“This means a lot to have the state of Tennessee acknowledge my hard work,” he said. “I wasn’t an All-Star or commercial kind of guy, I was a grinder.”<\/p>\n

Allen, taken in the first round by the Boston Celtics<\/a> in 2004, played for the Grizzlies from 2010 to 2017, and his No. 9 jersey hangs in the rafters of FedEx Forum. He embodied the “grit and grind” identity of the team during one of its most successful eras, part of the “Core Four” with Marc Gasol, Zach Randolph and Mike Conley.<\/p>\n

“They are still my brothers to this day,” Allen said.<\/p>\n

A relentless defender, he was named to the NBA All-Defensive Team six times. But it was when he tore his ACL in January 2007 that he realized what he wanted his role to be.<\/p>\n

“When you look at the job of lockdown defender, I had to adjust my game when I tore my ACL, so for me it was survival,” he said. “That was mainly the reason why I excelled so well in that.”<\/p>\n

LOCKED UP: Memphis Grizzlies sign guard Cam Spencer to four-year contract extension<\/a><\/p>\n

It was something he loved to be known for, and opposing players knew every game against Allen would be a battle.<\/p>\n

“I always liked embracing that job because I knew that was the job that had the most minutes,” Allen said. “A lot of guys aren’t willing to compete at a high level for 48 minutes, but I was. A lot of people in my profession don’t like signing up for that kind of job.”<\/p>\n

In Allen’s case, it meant guarding the other team’s best player, and his favorite person to guard was Kobe Bryant.<\/p>\n

“I always remembered at least two or three moves or adjustments he made from the previous matchup,” Allen said. “I was big on film, but he had the utmost confidence out of anybody. He was relentless, a prolific scorer and the face of the league.”<\/p>\n

ALL DEFENSE: Grizzlies rookie Jahmai Mashack, former Tennessee guard, wows with \u2018rare quality\u2019 on defense<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tony Allen, who spent seven of his 14 NBA seasons with the Memphis Grizzlies and became a legendary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3795],"tags":[2126,2258,7,45,75,46,919,2127,2093,294,5968,2125,3456,293,177,4070,70,85,6,67,169,61,134,132,118,66,83,55,2128,689,33034,10227,18639,11479,7271],"class_list":{"0":"post-182751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-memphis-grizzlies","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-allen","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-boston","12":"tag-boston-celtics","13":"tag-celtics","14":"tag-chicago","15":"tag-enabled","16":"tag-fame","17":"tag-grizzlies","18":"tag-hall","19":"tag-highlights","20":"tag-il","21":"tag-memphis","22":"tag-memphis-grizzlies","23":"tag-memphisgrizzlies","24":"tag-national","25":"tag-national-sports","26":"tag-nba","27":"tag-news","28":"tag-of","29":"tag-overall","30":"tag-overall-positive","31":"tag-positive","32":"tag-sharing","33":"tag-sports","34":"tag-sports-news","35":"tag-story","36":"tag-story-highlights-ai-enabled","37":"tag-tennessee","38":"tag-tennessee-sports-hall-of-fame","39":"tag-tn","40":"tag-tn-sharing-tennessee-sports","41":"tag-tony","42":"tag-tony-allen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114883685534349129","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}