There was a mini-dust-up between Danny Granger and Kevin Love late in the third quarter during Indiana’s 109-99 win over Minnesota earlier tonight. It was most likely one of those “he-did-he-thought” things. Love clearly reached out and smacked Granger with his arm extended and also sorta grabbed Granger’s shoulder while he was fouling him and lost his balance. But Danny, not having eyes in the back of his head (as anyone who has seen him pass can attest … ZING), thought Kevin was doing it more-on-purpose than he likely was. Perhaps he was up to something a little more nefarious. Love said it was a “hard foul.”
Either way, nobody was harmed, Danny yelled, Love just sorta stood there, Michael Beasley and Frank Vogel rushed over, and nothing really happened. But then something did happen.
Granger, who was already having a whale of a third quarter (15 points in the period up to that point), scored 14 more points following the fracas as his team pulled away. And he was ultra-physical and aggressive while waging his little one-man army campaign in a way that you know he was all sorts of charged up. As the philosopher Billy Hoyle once prophesized, Danny, unlike most guys, seems to play better when he’s mad.
After the win, Roy Hibbert wanted to make sure the rest of the NBA knew that Love had erred in his ways. So as a word of advice, he took to Twitter let everyone know they shouldn’t make the same mistake of angering his captain.
Great win tonight. Lesson to the league don’t get @dgranger33 mad. Y’all been warned!!
So take that to heart, league. You’re on notice about getting Danny Granger mad, according to Roy Hibbert.
The foul that started it all.
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Breaking Down Danny Granger’s Shooting Improvement
by Jared Wade on January 31, 2012 at 5:23 pm · 0 comments
Danny Granger has made 26 of his past 52 shots. By using my fingers and toes, I’ve discovered that that equals 50% from the field. If you go back even further, to include his past six games, he has made 45 of his past 95 shots. That’s a little worse but still good for 47.4%, which is almost 3 percentage points above his career average FG%. Better still, he has been sticking his threes of late. In that six-game stretch, he has his 14 of his 31 shots (45.2%) from behind the arc. Sharp shooting.
While this is all good news, his season-long numbers are so heavily weighted down by his early season struggles that they remain gross. Danny’s eFG% is only 44.1%. His career average is 48.6%, so he reamins s 4.5 percentage points below what we should expect. Given that his low point this season was after 7 games, when his eFG% was 36.4%. however, it’s notable that he has picked up about 7.7 percentage points over his past 11 outings.
As far as where on the court he is hitting from, according to Hoopdata, Danny is still shooting below average at the rim and in the mid-range. His shooting rates at the rim, from 10-15 feet and from 16-23 feet are 1.4, 1.7, and 2,8 points against league average, respectively.
Again, things are trending northward, however. Since his low point after game 7, Granger picked up 15.7 percentage points at the rim, 10.7 percentage points from 10-15, and 16.3 percentage points from 16-23 feet. (The only place he’s fallen back is from 3-9 feet, where he’s given back 16.6 points. However, he’s still shooting well there objectively, with 47.1% success rate vs. a league average of 40.0%.)
Interestingly, this change in effectiveness has come without much of a change in shot selection. He has hoisted up at least 13 shots in each of his last 6 games and the location distribution has held pretty steady. Since that low point after the first 7 games, he has increased his shooting volume about 2.5% from the 3-9 range and 0.7% at the rim. But those are negligible changes within this sample size.
In short, Granger’s recent shooting improvement isn’t coming from a better shot selection.
It’s coming from better shot making.
Related Topics: Danny Granger
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