A father's guiding hand
Danny Granger's dad made sure his three children grew up right, despite their surroundings
Posted: January 18, 2009 To understand the son, it's imperative to know the father. How the father -- in this case Danny Granger Sr. -- raised three children by himself in a drug-ravaged neighborhood outside New Orleans. How all three of Senior's kids, including his NBA All-Star-to-be son, Danny, have become high achievers in their chosen professions. How his steady, stern hand, his tough love (really tough, at times) ensured that his kids would rise above the drug- and violence-addled chaos that visited their daily lives."Don't get me wrong; I was mischievous,'' the Indiana Pacers swingman said the other day outside the team's locker room at Conseco Fieldhouse. He smiled. "But the things I did wrong never came close to anything like selling drugs or pulling a gun on somebody. And the reason for that was, I was afraid if I did, my dad would kill me.
"I could have gone the wrong way. Almost all of my friends did, the guys I grew up with. They ended up selling drugs, ended up in jail or were found dead. That was the neighborhood. That was how people felt like they needed to survive. They didn't have dads to keep them out of trouble. A lot of them had a grandmother who didn't pay too much attention, or a mother who was a crack-head. How's a kid supposed to overcome that by themselves? Getting out of that cycle is extremely hard.
"I got a call about a month ago from a penitentiary in Texas, an old friend. We used to be best friends, but he got caught up in drugs, a heavy cocaine dealer and the feds were after him. He got into a drug deal that went bad, got shot 18 times. Now he's paralyzed from the waist down and he's doing a life sentence.
"But my dad wouldn't have it with his kids. It was academics and then, with me, it was basketball. That's what he pushed. We could be from that area, but we weren't going to be of that area.''
Specifically, Granger is from Metairie, La., just outside New Orleans, and it is by almost every account one of the most miserable, hopeless, dangerous places in this country. Senior had his own business rebuilding backhoes, forklifts and anything else those big, greasy hands could recondition, but still, the Granger family -- Senior and the three kids living together after the mother, Janice, left when Junior was 12 -- was stuck in the neighborhood.
"Wherever you've been, our neighborhood was worse,'' he said, laughing. "Most of the roads aren't even paved; just rocky gravel. Lots of run-down houses. You knew which houses were crack houses. My dad, before I'd ride my bike, he'd tell me, 'You're not riding down this street or this street' because they were so dangerous. We had train tracks that ran through the neighborhood, maybe 200 yards from my house, a small, grassy area, and people were always finding bodies there.''
A successful family
So how did Senior keep his kids on the straight and narrow? Consider: His other son, 21-year-old Scott, is a musician and backup singer for Alicia Keys and Jordin Sparks, and his 27-year-old daughter, Jamie, is an engineer living in Arizona.
Love. Discipline. Religion (the Grangers are Jehovah's Witnesses). Attention. A stern hand. Did we mention love?
The relationship is still strong, so strong that Senior and Junior continue to live in the same house in Carmel. Senior moved to Albuquerque, N.M., when Junior went to the University of New Mexico, and he has been with Junior since he came to the Pacers. The agreement has been that Senior would stick around until Junior got his first big contract -- he received it early this season -- plus there's the issue of Junior getting married this August.
Time for Pops to go.
"I'm moving to a condo Downtown in the next month or so,'' Senior said. "It's going to be a little scary for me. I'll admit it. I've always had my kids around me.''
Junior smiled. "Believe me, he'll be over a lot,'' he said. "But I won't mind it. I never really wanted him to leave. I like having him around, but I'm getting married, so, you know . . .''
Yeah, you know . . .
One day during Junior's childhood -- he was maybe 8 or 9 -- Senior had an idea. Instead of having his son play basketball all around the dangerous city, he figured he could better keep an eye on him by purchasing the land next to his house and building his own half-court.
He put up floodlights, the whole deal. That court at 805 S. Cumberland became the basketball center of the area.
Home-court advantage
"We had rules,'' Senior said. "No cursing and no selling drugs, which meant no beepers allowed. If I heard a beeper go off, you were gone. And these guys used to police each other. I'd be in the window watching, there would be 20 waiting for winners, somebody would curse and somebody else would stop the game and say, 'Hey, Mr. Granger won't let us play over here if you start to curse.'
"I remember one guy, he was maybe 12 years old, name was Clyde, his beeper went off. So I stopped the game, went up to him and said 'Clyde, what's with the beeper?' He said, 'Mr. G, we've got to make it some kind of way.' I told him, 'You know this is a dead end. I've done told you all that you can't do the drug activity on the court, or all you'll have to leave.'
"About two months later, they found him with his face blown off.''
Junior shook his head, thinking about the most dangerous characters in the neighborhood coming to Mr. Granger's court, acting like perfect angels.
"We had these guys, gold teeth, the whole thing, guys right out of prison,'' Junior said. "I had one old friend, Snake, he came out of prison, he came over to the courts after a few years away, and he knew the rules. There were certain things you could do and couldn't do. My dad had that kind of respect in the neighborhood.''
The court developed Junior's skills and his toughness.
"One time I was playing, I got hit in the nose and it started bleeding. I ran inside the house. My dad yelled at me, 'When you want to be a man, you can go outside and start playing again,' '' Junior said. "So I sucked it up and finished playing. I played my dad one day, he got hit, chipped some teeth. Me and my uncle got into it and we had a fight. Happened all the time.''
Respect in the neighborhood
The stories of Senior's toughness are the stuff of legend around the Granger neighborhood.
There was the time some gangbanger came to the Granger house uninvited, opened the door without knocking and insisted the family send out its then- 14-year-old daughter. When Senior caught wind of this, he chased the young man about half a mile and then worked him over.
"Nobody messes with my family!'' Senior said.
There was the time when a newcomer to the neighborhood made the mistake of stealing some of Senior's tools. The younger Granger brother, Scott, saw the perpetrator and pointed him out to Dad. Mr. Granger got out of his truck and approached the miscreant while the five friends surrounding him all scattered. Senior, using only his hands, administered a life lesson to the young felon.
In an anarchic neighborhood, there were few rules, but one of them was, you don't mess with the Grangers. Even the gangbangers and the dealers knew that if you bothered with Danny, Scott or Jamie, Pops was going to get in the picture, and that meant trouble.
"My dad didn't have a weapon,'' Junior said. "He didn't need one.''
Senior didn't build that court because he saw his son as a future NBA player. Far from it. He just wanted him to survive the neighborhood and move on to an academic career that would help him succeed in a better place.
See, Junior was an academic star -- a staple in gifted and talented classes -- long before anybody knew he could make it on the basketball floor.
Instead of attending one of the local high schools, all of which were athletic powerhouses, Danny, an extraordinary student, was sent to an academic magnet school with lesser athletic programs.
"That was always my dad's focus: academics,'' Junior said. "He wanted me to play basketball, but he wasn't going to send me someplace because they had a better basketball team.''
Academics came first
It wasn't until high school that father and son started to think that maybe, just maybe, Junior could play at the next level, namely college. That's when Senior got a little bit overzealous, at least in Junior's mind. There were times after games, Junior would come home from a game dog-tired, and dad would turn on the court's floodlights.
"Put your shoes on,'' he'd say. "We've got work to do.''
Junior laughs now. He didn't laugh at the time.
"I'm like, 'Dad, it's 1 in the morning. I've got school,' '' Junior said. "We'd go out, maybe I'd missed a couple of shots during the game or made some move, he'd make me do drills. Meanwhile, in my neighborhood, people are just coming out at 1. The next day they'd see me at school, they'd be like, 'Man, what were you doing at 1 in the morning?' 'That's my daddy.' It was crazy. A little over the line at times.''
Senior told the story a little differently.
"Danny told me people at school would laugh at him because we'd be out there at 3 and 4 in the morning and they'd laugh at him,'' Senior said. "But look who's laughing now.''
Junior didn't get many scholarship offers to play Division I basketball, although he was given the opportunity to attend and play hoops at prestigious Yale. He scored a 30 on his ACT. Senior wanted his kid to go there. Imagine, a kid from the neighborhood, graduating a prestigious Ivy League school. Junior had his misgivings -- "Whole time I was there, I didn't see another black person,'' he said -- and eventually he went to Bradley in Peoria, Ill. Later, he transferred to New Mexico, where he got his engineering degree and grew dramatically as a basketball player.
In his four years in Indianapolis, he has grown, more this year than any other. He has become more than a guy who scores lots of points on a losing team. He has become a leader, a guy who takes the ball on the final possession and makes things happen.
An All-Star whether the voters recognize him or not.
"Oh, he'll be there,'' Senior said. "I've already made my arrangements.''
Question for the coaches who will decide whether to vote Danny Granger onto the Eastern Conference All-Star squad: Any of you guys want to tell Mr. Granger his kid didn't make it?