If the comparison had anything to do with the actions and the consequences we'd be talking about Omar Payne or Kewan Platt.
In the case of Duke's Allen, he put players in a position of harm multiple times. I'm not willing to say tripping a dude is harmless. You can cause permanent damage when players are going full throttle.
They weren't going full throttle. One against FSU was a guy who was stationary on an inbound and got tripped off his initial cut. Against UL it was a guy who had gotten a rebound and was just starting to turn up the court having barely taken one dribble. Against Elon the guy was driving to the basket, had gotten cut off and tried to spin move. None of those were anywhere in the same vicinity as dangerous as the play Collins made. Yes they were bush league. No they didn't rise to the level of even warranting an ejection, and the one game suspension was probably in line with what it should have been. It was a meme because it was initially called an indefinite suspension and then changed but a single game suspension for repeated acts like that is pretty much in line with what is normally done (see the NBA's repeated technical foul rules).
Hell the worst Allen has done to my knowledge (the one against Caruso a couple weeks back) is a good comparison only to show just how far beyond even normal dirty plays this play was. At least then Allen still got in front, still made an effort to contest the shot, the contact that was made was still to the wrist holding the ball, and still slowed down. This play was several orders of magnitude worse than that one and that one was a flagrant 2 foul worthy of an ejection.
The comparison to Allen's tripping only serves to downplay just how bad this was, whether that was the intent or not.
Second, irrespective of the foul, the contact could have been unintentional. Moore moved his body to the right slightly to align himself for the dunk. Collins was flying down the court and had no opportunity to alter his course. This is the basis for his post-game apology.
There is no way that contact was unintentional. Moore moved his body to align himself with the dunk? What was Collins expecting the basketball player to do with the basketball? Not go to the basket with the ball? Second, Collins did a lot more to go towards Moore than vise versa.
His apology is completely bunk. He was going for a block from behind? That's why he had a gather step, elevated to contest and took a swipe at the ball?
Oh wait, he did none of that. He went full bore, didn't break stride, didn't try to time his steps, didn't jump, didn't contest, made no play on the ball in any way, shape or form, put a forearm into the hip of an airborn player and hit him so hard that he (meaning collins himself) got turned around and still slammed into the padding at the base of the basket. What was his plan if there wasn't contact? To Lambo leep into the stands?
On top of that had he made any effort to go for a block he wouldn't have made contact because he would have had to slow down to try and elevate it. Had he actually tried to contest it would likely have been no foul. But he didn't try to block the shot from behind. He tried to run through a guy elevating for a dunk and take his legs out. And he did just that.
