Why is Gary Grant's number not retired?
4 year starter, captain, 2-time Big Ten champion.
1st team All-American and Conference Player of the Year.
UM Career ranks:
Points: 4th
Assists: 1st
Steals: 1st
Games started: 2nd
He was a great player and leader. Seems to be underappreciated as the years have passed.
Dynamic baller who was TRULY under appreicated. Perhaps playing with Joubert,his backcourt mate,had something to do with that...
I think there's a few reasons why Gary Grant is overlooked (which I agree he very much is), The biggest is the lack of tournament success. His teams lost in the 2nd round 3 times and only made it to the sweet 16 once. Also, he didn't have a GREAT NBA career.
Great player but I think retiring numbers has to be a really really high bar at the college level and I'm not sure Grant quite reaches it.
The entire Freider era tends to get overlooked because of the way it ended and the extreme drama of the Fisher era.
It's a great question because he was clearly one of the best if not THE best point guard Michigan has ever produced. Grant played lights out defense too which is often overlooked in the stats the OP posted (other than steals). I think the lack of tournament success played a huge role in keeping his Michigan legacy from gettng its due IMO.
We've played that "name your all time Michigan starting five" game several times. He is ALWAYS my first team PG and it's too bad most of the board is too young to have ever seen him play. He was amazing.
I watched him play at Crisler as a grad student and he is one of my top Michigan players of all time. He was tireless. The guy would play almost the entire 40 minutes game after game.
He made and all-star team, averaged over 15ppg 7 times, and had twice as many minutes as Grant over similar number of years. Russell MIGHT have been somewhat of a disappointment relative to his draft status (#1 overall), but he still had a far better career than Grant - both individually and team succcess. Grant didn't transition well to the NBA 3-point line and became a career backup after just a few years. Unfortunately there appear to be some parallels going on with Trey Burke, even though they were very different players.
And yes - NBA does matter. What you do with your time after graduating absolutely plays into your number being retired or not. Tom Brady has a shot of having his number retired at MIchigan for what he's done in the NFL.
"Me and the NCAA's just don't get along." Turned out to be very true, as he and his teams greatly underachieved in the tournament every year.
but how many touchdowns did he have?
Fewer than Kelvin Grady.
Same number as that dancing guy on the football team, and people here wanted that guy's number retired, so QED.
And "The Judge".... Antoine Joubert. He was pretty good too!
If not his jersey, at least raise those shorts to the rafters?
I think they've already been raised high enough, thank you very much.
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TEAMWORK. o/ \o
I went to UofM's basketball camp in '85. Frieder was still head coach, but Fisher was basically running the camp. Anyway, all us campers were sitting in Crisler Arena listening to Fisher lecture about something. Grant walked in and all eyes turned to him. He proceeded to demonstrate a few skills and then he went one-on-one with a few campers. Just destroyed them. He was The General.
He was our best player for sure when he was here, but he just never captured the imagination the way other players have. He was just steady excellence game in, game out.
Underrated.
you touch yourself at night.
five Michigan basketball jersey numbers have been "retired".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Wolverines_men%27s_basketball#Re…
Retired numbers[edit]
| Michigan Wolverines retired numbers | ||||
| No. | Player | Position | Career | No. retirement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 | Bill Buntin | PF, C | 1962–65 | Jan 7, 2006 |
| 33 | Cazzie Russell | SG, SF | 1963–66 | Dec 11, 1993 |
| 35 | Phil Hubbard | PF, C | 1975–79 | Jan 11, 2004 |
| 41 | Glen Rice | SF | 1985–89 | Feb 20, 2005[57] |
| 45 | Rudy Tomjanovich | PF | 1967–70 | Feb 8, 2003 |
But of course, it's Wikipedia, and the article also states:
Michigan has had 26 All-Americans selected 33 times. Eight of these have been consensus All-Americans: Cazzie Russell (two-times), Rickey Green, Gary Grant, Chris Webber, Trey Burke, as well as Harry Kipke, Ricky Doyle and Bennie Oosterbaan (two-times) who were retroactively selected by the Helms Foundation.
Obviously, Duncan Robinson is wearing #22. This 2010 umich.edu article states:
http://michigantoday.umich.edu/a7891/
Crisler Arena is nicknamed “The House that Cazzie Built,” and Cazzie Russell’s number 33 is the only one that’s truly retired, though others have been “honored.”
In men’s basketball, the custom of honoring and retiring jerseys has only started within the last two decades, starting in 1993, when guard Cazzie Russell’s number 33 was hung in the rafters. Former head coach Tommy Amaker, taking a page from coach and mentor Mike Krzyzewski’s book at Duke, hearkened to Michigan’s glory days by honoring the jerseys of past Wolverine greats, like Glenn Rice (number 41) and Rudy Tomjanovich (number 45).But as sports information director Bruce Madej explained, there is only one jersey that will never be worn again in “The House that Cazzie Built”—the number 33 once worn by the former Wolverines guard himself. Russell is widely credited with restoring Michigan basketball to relevance in the 1960s.
The other jerseys were honored by the program, but can still be assigned, Madej said.
I do not have a link to the SuperGuide™.
I would strongly support 'honoring' Gary Grant's number. Eventually, Juwan Howard's too.
When was the last time we retired someone's number, besides the football legends program?
I also find it odd that Marty Turco and Brendan Morrison don't have their number retired. Is there a reason why hockey doesn't retire numbers?
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Only Cazzie's number is officially retired; the others in the rafters are being honored but can still be assigned. Duncan Robinson wears 22 for example.
They should honor his number then. He certainly deserves it just as much as Rudy T and Phil Hubbard.
At some point Burke's number should also be up honored. He basically won every major award in 2013.
I think his greatness was recognized at the time, just not since. He was truly incredible in his quickness of hand & foot, along with amazing timing , instincts & brains as an absolute clamp down menace on D, & as a brilliant General at the point. His shooting was sometimes streaky, but clutch when needed, outside of the disastrous tourneys!
I think it's definitely only the tourney failings of GG & the team that have kept him from the legendary status his overall play actually merits. People forget what those conference champ teams were actually like. In both of those years there were 17 or 18 game winning streaks during the meat of the BIG schedule as well as a couple of mid season non conference battles with giants, & Maybe was #1 in the polls much of that time. During those streaks, virtually every game, no matter how good the opponent, at some point Grant & the boys would put a vice grip of a press on & shut down the other team & go on a monster showtime TO into fastbreak frenzy that would ice the game, & almost every game they either won by 20 to 25 or built a 25 point lead at some point during the game! That's why the tourney chokes were so frustrating & disappointing, because they were the best team & didn't show it!
To be fair though, the one year we lost to the unknown & underrated eventual national Champs with the Granger Bros who played the perfect game & upset the unbeatable Patrick Ewing GTWN team.
Now in terms of pure PG talent, the best I ever saw was ET, Eric Turner, but that was how he played on his amazing Flint Central State Championship team with him freelancing the all out run n gun. Instead Freeds had him walk the ball up court & pass it around the parameter in a slow half court offense! We had the horses to run with the original Fab Five of Tarpley, Wade, Henderson, Jokisch & Rellford, but Freder blew it & Turner was a head case anyway. Sigh
Retire #25 and you get both.
you had to be there.
But just massively underperformed at tourney time, and that is when legendary careers are cemented. in people's minds. The only real differences between the 88 and 89 teams were Gary Grant and Sean Higgins. But Grant just disappeared against North Carolina in the tourney in '88. He averaged over 20 a game that year and only went for 7 against Carolina.
Gary Grant was the best PG in Michigan history and in my opinion its not even close. He played a complete game at least until the 3 was introduced. My favorite player as an undergrad and now.
I remember a game he had 4 fouls by the midpoint of the first half. He didnt get autopulled, played the rest of the game without fouling out and was the difference between a W and an L. An amazing performance. Wish I could remember what year it was and who we were playing. I seem to remember it was a big game though.
Jheri! Jheri! Jheri! Jheri!
(Just ask Rick James, bitch!)
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ET was a phenomenal player of that era too. He overlapped with GG for one season I think (1984). Went pro after his junior year after getting some bad advice. (I met him at a party that year and he told me he KNEW he was going first round. He went in the second.) I also got the impression he wasn't much of a fan of Coach Frieder.
I think we have to blame some of Gary Grant's under-performing in the tourney on coaching. Frieder always seemed intimidated and kind of clueless. Great recruiter but not a great bench coach. Never made it past the 2nd round of the tourney in his career. We were stacked in 83-84 and had to go to the NIT. No one I knew was sad to see him go. I credit our tourney win in 89 less to Steve Fisher than to Bo firing Frieder.
was on his team, and let me tell you, if you got an inch on someone, the ball was in your hands. he even missed me once and apologized to me on the way back down the court. which is just to say that he was a good dude.
rumeal was also playing that day, on the opposite team, and one time in transition i got matched up on him up top. he was holding the ball, and i, being a spazzy no-talent, began wildly waving my arms around to try to cut off his passing lanes. he got a disgusted look on his face and held the ball out to me...i slapped at it, trying to knock it out of his hands. of course, i failed, as his arms were like steel bands and mine were...not. he then put the ball on the floor, blew past me with an nba-level first step, and dunked over whatever dude decided to help out. it was sort of a thing of beauty.
meanwhile, glen rice watched on the next (empty) court over, raining down 30-footers. it was a good day.