Will Curry Bite the Dust?

So by tomorrow morning's shootaround, we will all know what the hullabaloo's all about. Isiah Thomas admitted after the loss on Sunday to the Lakers that it was time to shake things up in the starting lineup.

Cue the thunder and drama. Almost all observers have assumed that Eddy Curry will get the hook and be replaced as a starter by David Lee. Unfortunately, this development has the real and very scary potential of actually improving the Knicks.

I mean, that's quite a notion - the only player on the team who clearly cares about winning should start. It only took Isiah four seasons to figure out that in the pampered NBA superstar universe, a big difference in effort and motivation trumps a small difference in talent.

Anyway, I enjoyed this article from the Times' Howard Beck about the problems of playing Curry and Zach Randolph (above left) at the same time. Some of the nice tidbits:

"Randolph (a power forward) and Curry (a center) are, of course, not the team’s only problems. The Knicks are terrible defensively, and have been for several seasons. They are stocked with gifted one-on-one scorers who struggle to mesh in a team game. They lack a true, undisputed leader."
...
"Thomas has promoted the idea that Randolph’s outside shooting ability makes him a complementary player to Curry. But all three scouts interviewed for this article disagreed."
...
"All three scouts recommended moving Curry or Randolph to the bench and minimizing their minutes together. Only one of the three scouts expressed any belief that the tandem might improve over time. Then again, the Knicks’ problems may be much bigger than their big men. The Pacific Division scout said the Knicks simply lacked an identity. 'Certain teams, you know what they do,' said the scout, pointing to Washington (which runs the Princeton motion offense) and New Orleans (pick-and-rolls with Chris Paul), among others. 'Everyone has principles or cores. New York, they’ve got a lot of individual offensive talent, but they don’t have, it seems to me, any principles, any cores.'"

No principles, no cores. That's a nice summary of the state of things in New York.

The graphic (above) that accompanied the article was also interesting. It's about time plus/minus was regularly calculated as an NBA stat like it is for hockey. Curry's mark of -11 overall and -16 while playing without Randolph is simply astonishing. He's also been on the negative side during every season in his career.