He’s Got Answers

PALO ALTO —  Name the starting five for the 1969-70 New York Knicks.

Dave DeBusschere, Bill Bradley, Willis Reed, Dick Barnett and Walt Frazier.

Who was NBA rookie of the year and the league’s most valuable player in 1968-69?

Wes Unseld.

What was Jerry West’s nickname?

Zeke from Cabin Creek.

Those are the sort of questions that sometimes greet Stanford guard Dan Grunfeld when he boards the team bus. Trivia quizzes for a trivia whiz.

Coach Trent Johnson says Grunfeld knows who was on the cover of issues of Sports Illustrated published before he was born. Bob Vazquez, the media relations director who travels with the team, searches the Internet for trivia questions. Teammate Chris Hernandez just shakes his head at Grunfeld’s ability.

“He knows everything,” Hernandez said. “The way he throws out the names and dates, it’s amazing.”

Grunfeld has certain advantages.

Some college players don’t know who Walt Frazier is. Grunfeld knows Walt Frazier.

Grunfeld’s father is Ernie Grunfeld, the former general manager of the Knicks and Milwaukee Bucks who is president of basketball operations for the Washington Wizards.

“He’s very interested in it, reads a lot and we watch a lot of games -- and he knows a lot of the people involved in the trivia,” said Ernie Grunfeld, who speaks to his son by phone every day.

“We go on a lot of long trips and I ask him a lot of different trivia questions, but I ran out of them.”

Before this season, Dan Grunfeld’s role could pass for trivia: What NBA executive’s son averaged three points a game for a Pacific 10 Conference team?

But suddenly, Grunfeld, a 6-foot-6 junior, is the third-leading scorer in the Pac-10, averaging 18.1 points and trailing only Ike Diogu of Arizona State and Dijon Thompson of UCLA.

“I think for Dan, it’s just getting a chance to get playing time. He definitely can score in many ways. He’s not just a shooter,” Hernandez said.

“Dan’s a scorer,” Johnson said a few days after Grunfeld scored a career-high 29 points in Stanford’s upset of Arizona.

“He’s not blessed with all the physical attributes, speed and quickness, but this is not a track meet, it’s the game of basketball.”

Not that he might not do well in a track meet. When Stanford held its mile run during preseason practice, Grunfeld won in 5 minutes 5 seconds.

“He’s worked very hard,” Ernie Grunfeld said. “He has a very good feel for the game. He understands spacing and timing and he knows where the open spots are.”

It would be difficult to get a better basketball education than Dan has. He was born in 1984, when his father was playing for the Knicks. Ernie went on to work as a radio analyst for the Knicks after retiring in 1986. He was hired as general manager in 1991, and the Knicks reached the NBA Finals in 1994 and 1999.

“Just growing up, it was what I did. On Sundays or weekends, I would go to practice with my dad and shoot or play basketball,” Dan said.

“John Starks, I just loved. Allan Houston, Charles Oakley, Patrick Ewing, Derek Harper I really liked. I loved the Knicks -- when I was younger.”

The Knicks fired Ernie Grunfeld in 1999, and after he was hired as general manager of the Bucks, the family moved to the Milwaukee area, where Dan became a standout at Nicolet High. His father joined the Wizards in 2003, making one item in Dan’s Stanford biography easy to guess.

“My favorite NBA team: Washington Wizards.”