So I join this fantasy basketball league at the last minute. It is just a fun league between some friends I hardly know. They decide to do an auto-draft.
If you have never done an auto-draft, all you have to do is rank a list of players and let the computer draft for you. It is the fastest, most casual form of a fantasy draft. I didn't even bother ranking my players. I just went with the default, Yahoo rankings.
On my team winds up a player named Danny Granger of the Indiana Pacers. Maybe I am the most ill-informed basketball fan, but I had never heard of him. I was about to drop him, but decided I had better check his statistics from last season first.
His Yahoo ranking was 11th as compared to Kevin Garnett who was ranked 8th. Garnett scored 1337 points last year. Granger scored 1567 points. Garnett grabbed 655 rebounds, Granger grabbed 486. Garnett handed out 244 assists while Granger dished out 166. Garnett had 100 steals and 89 blocks while Granger had 95 steals and 84 blocks.
So, I am looking this over, thinking I have found myself a poor man's Kevin Garnett and then I see the shocker: Granger also made 171 three-pointers last year compared to Garnett's zero. So, he is basically Garnett with range. Garnett is on the world champion Boston Celtics and Granger is on the lowly Indiana Pacers. That is the only explanation I have for not knowing who Granger was.
Granger is 6 foot 9 inches tall, was born in New Orleans just over 25 years ago and played some college ball for New Mexico. In his first game of this season he dropped in 33 points and showed that he is clearly the Pacers go to guy. How is it I never heard of him?
I thought maybe I was just out of touch, so I asked a knowledgable co-worker if he had heard of Danny Granger. He looked at me like he didn't know what sport I was talking about. So, either we are both grossly uninformed or most people don't know who Granger is.
I know two people is a small sample, so I would love to hear comments from anyone else out there who reads this. If you knew all about Danny Granger, please let me know. If you didn't know anything about him please let me know. I am just curious how famous this guy is. He certainly will become more and more famous if his career continues on the path it is on now.
Keywords: Boston Celtics, Danny Granger, Fantasy Basketball, Indiana Pacers, Kevin Garnett
Comments
Haha! Danny Granger is not yet as awesome as the stats say he is. Maybe he is just overshadowed by his teammates and former teammates like Jermaine O'neal and Michael Dunleavy.
He is a great shooter and is also athletic as well. Though at times he seems inconsistent, he is still one of the marquee players of Indiana. Someday he'll be an all-star.