Unsung Player Day: Danny Granger

Categorized as: Fantasy Basketball
Posted on: April 5th, 2008

To celebrate Unsung Player Day, both Patrick and I decided to post today! Of course, Patrick actually had his post up and made the initially posting in that link there. I’ll be sending mine as soon as I finish…

As soon as I finish singing the unsung praises of Danny Granger!

As Patrick said in his post:

This being a fantasy basketball blog, that means it’s the day to recognize a good and useful fantasy guy who doesn’t get any attention, respect, or possibly even play.

Of course, Patrick is also under the impression this is some sort of actual holiday that people will be celebrating or something. I hope he doesn’t go out tonight and expect to find oddly colored beer, or super deals on hot wings or something. Well, with the Final Four games tonight, I suppose that’s a possibility.

Now I don’t meant to brag, I don’t mean to boast, but I’m like hot butter on a breakfast toast. In that… along with Chris Paul (*heart*) drafted at 13, I picked up Danny Granger in the DroppingDimes Experts League draft at number 69. (go ahead, laugh a little, you know you want to) Granger was drafted on average at number 67.4 (according to Yahoo). He now stands at number 24 on the GMTR Player Rater, 24 for Yahoo’s Actual Stat Rankings, 19 for Yahoo’s Average Stat Rankings, and 25 on NBA.com’s Player Rater.

If that’s not the steal of the draft, I’m not sure what is. And yet, what have you ever heard about Danny Granger? Certainly not as much as you’ve heard about just about everyone else on the Pacers.

Look at this picture that David Liam Kyle (three first names? seriously?) took of the silky smooth jumper that has netted 2 out of every 5 three point attempts:

Here’s a picture that Bill Baptist took of Granger’s tenacious defense. It’s the kind of defense that will get you 1.2 steals and 1 block per game.

Believe it or not, I don’t get to see a lot of Pacers games (I know! Chicago is so close to Indianapolis! What gives?), so all I can really say is that Danny Granger is scoring 18.9 points per game, and no one really seems to notice. He’s been attempting 4.6 free throws per game this season making 85% of them. And if I hadn’t drafted him, I would never have known.

He’s not often the Line of the Night kind of guy, but in this photo (by Ron Hoskins) he’s totally abusing frequent Waiver Wire Line of the Nighter Chris Quinn:

The only downside with Granger is that his field goal shooting has declined each year he’s been in the league, but 44% still isn’t bad for someone who is posting (sorry for repeating myself a little) 18.9 points, 5.9 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 1.2 steals, 1 block, 2 threes, and only 2.2 turnovers. That is enough to make me believe in Midball again. So much so that I might try it next season and end up hating Danny Granger as much as I love him right now. Until that happens, though, I’ll just ride him as far as he’ll take me, and keep singing about him in the shower while getting all lathered up.

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