Danny Granger: Metairie's Most Improved

Metairie's Most Improved

Danny Granger was born in New Orleans in 1983 and grew up in Metairie, where he became one of the most dominant high school basketball players the metro area had ever seen — averaging over twenty-four points and twelve rebounds a game as a senior. The kid could score from anywhere on the floor, and everybody in Jefferson Parish knew it.

After college at New Mexico, the Indiana Pacers took Granger seventeenth overall in the 2005 draft. He was solid from the start, making the All-Rookie Second Team, but it was his 2008-09 season that announced him as one of the best players in the NBA. Granger averaged twenty-six points per game on forty-five percent shooting and won the Most Improved Player award — though calling him "improved" doesn't quite capture it. He'd increased his scoring average by at least five points in three consecutive seasons, something no one in NBA history had done before.

That same year, he was named an All-Star. In 2010, he won a gold medal with Team USA at the FIBA World Championship and dropped a career-high forty-four points on Utah in a regular season game that Pacers fans still remember.

Then came the knees. Injuries derailed what should have been Granger's prime years, and he bounced between the Clippers, Heat, Suns, and Pistons before retiring in 2015. It's one of the cruelest what-ifs in recent NBA history — what would Danny Granger's career have looked like if his knees had held up?

After basketball, Granger moved into broadcasting as a studio and game analyst for CBS Sports Network, bringing the same intelligence he'd shown on the court to the commentary booth. But for New Orleans, the legacy is simple: Danny Granger was one of ours, a Metairie kid who became an NBA All-Star and proved that the metro area doesn't just produce football players.