Happy Dan Graves Day at Blazer's Edge!

Yesterday, just after the 31-minute mark of his latest podcast, OregonLive's Mike Richman paid tribute to a Blazer's Edge institution, Dan Graves.

He's not a feature or recap writer so you may not remember him by name, but if you've been anywhere near the Blazer's Edge sidebar or social media outlets in the past year, you know Dan's work. All of our staff members work hard to bring you the best Blazers coverage available every day, but Dan is in a class by himself. He's like one of those Roomba robot vacuums. Every morning he turns on and sweeps up the entire internet for Blazers- and NBA-related material and brings it to you faithfully. All the rest of us wake up, yawn, and say, "Wow! Look what Dan found!"

How much has Dan changed our site over the last year? A couple anecdotes.

He started out as the designated sidebar person, delivering news via Fanshots. Very soon after we discovered that we didn't have enough room in the side column to contain his work. He was cycling through an entire page worth of Fanshots every couple hours. This led the staff to rechristen them as "Danshots", a name that has since leaked out.

Recently we moved Dan over to Facebook where he has more room to stretch his legs. Every month our parent network tracks each site in various metrics, including Facebook posts. Managing Editors get the data at the end of the month in nifty little graphs. As soon as Dan settled into his Facebook work, I got a call from our network supervisor. He was having trouble making the graph. The left side wouldn't fit our bar anymore without changing the scale. Dan broke it.

The best thing about Dan, hands down, is that he's not doing it for acclaim. He's just incredibly committed to getting material about the team he loves in front of fans everywhere. We're blessed to have him. Therefore, in recognition of his tireless work, we hereby declare January 12th, 2016 "Dan Graves Day" at Blazer's Edge. Join me in saying thanks for Dan's contributions.

--Dave blazersub@gmail.com / @DaveDeckard / @Blazersedge