The idea of staying away from basketball during the offseason doesn’t appeal to Indiana Pacers star Danny Granger. The summer months are his chance to give back to the community and to improve his own skills in the gym.
The NBA’s Most Improved Player spent the past week in Indianapolis as he hosted a three-day youth basketball camp at Park Tudor High School. Although Granger finds time to work on improving upon his own All-Star season, the forward said he needs to find the fun in the game during the summer. He told WTHR that his summer basketball camps fill that need:
There was a point where I was in college. It was almost not as much fun, because everyone was trying to make a big deal out of it. I've since found the fun in the game. But you never want kids to forget it's mostly about having fun."
Besides his camp at Park Tudor, Granger also hosted a camp at his alma mater, the University of New Mexico, which he and his father started four years ago. Granger told Fox 59 that the camps are chance for him to give back. “My favorite part, obviously is playing with kids,” Granger said. “I didn't have the opportunity to do this when I was a child, stuff like this didn't really happen where I grew up in New Orleans, it's great to bring it here to Indianapolis.”
Granger’s focus for the rest of the summer will be getting ready for the 2009-10 season. It was announced this week that the Pacers will play an exhibition game against Denver on Oct. 8 in Taipei, Taiwan. Granger, who took a league-sponsored trip to Indonesia last summer, said he is looking forward to the opportunity to play in Taipei.
It should be very interesting, China is a huge market for the NBA, [there are] a lot of fans over there and it should be great for the league. Even when I went to Indonesia, we might've added two or three million Pacers fans that live in Indonesia. We're going to China and I'm sure we'll do some event out there to interact with the fans. I'm pretty sure we'll have a lot more Pacers fans."
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