Guest Post: Remember the Paint?

Written by Ian Levy from Hickory High

As a fan of Danny Granger and the Pacers, this has been a frustrating season. This summer all the talk about Granger centered on his recommitment to defense, and his developing dribble drive game. I know he has been playing better lately, but on the year as a whole his defense has been inconsistent, and I have seen Danny in the paint about as often as Jeff Foster. I enjoyed every minute of Danny’s All-Star performance last year, but in some ways I feel like it has stunted his development. He spent an entire season worrying about the quantity of his points, never being asked to evaluate the quality of his points. He is a good, not great, 3-point shooter. I understand that we have few other weapons, and that the coaching and game planning is an epic disaster, but eight attempts a game is not good for the health of this Pacers offense.

I wrote a post earlier today about college players shooting over 40% on 3PT FG’s, and averaging over 5.0 FTA/G. I was surprised to see that Danny’s senior year at New Mexico, he qualified for this list (43.3% 3PT, 6.8 FTA/G). When you adjust these numbers for pace, and look at them over 40 minutes it becomes even more striking. That season he averaged 9.1 FTA/40! It’s not like this was a fluke. In his junior and sophmore seasons he averaged 10.0 FTA/40! I know the numbers don’t directly correlate between NBA and college, but this year he is averaging only 6.7 FTA/40.  It’s especially frustrating to compare that to his 7.3  3PTA/40.

If you had the potential to be on either list, which one would you choose? C’mon Danny! There’s a painted area . . . in the middle of the floor . . . close to the basket . . . get in there and make something happen!