Eddy Curry is a name not fondly remembered by New York Knicks fans. Curry, in many ways, was the embodiment of the struggles the franchise endured during the 2000s when they would often hand out bad contracts, which led to the team going absolutely nowhere.
He spoke about how the fans hated him when he didn't play well , and Curry's time with the team would end pretty badly as he was completely out of the rotation by the start of the 2008-09 season. Curry would play just 10 games for the Knicks from that point till February 2011, when the team traded him away to the Timberwolves as part of a 3-team deal to acquire Carmelo Anthony. Minnesota would buy out his contract immediately, and Curry became a free agent. He would go on to sign with the Miami Heat the following season, and Curry recently spoke to DJ Vlad about what it was like to play with the Big 3 of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh.
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"That was crazy. I have never felt such a duty to be ready. Even if I knew I wasn’t going to play, I knew I had to be ready. Just a duty to stay in shape, a duty to be in the best shape of my life, a duty to sacrifice to the game."
"Man, you saw LeBron, you saw D Wade, you saw Chris Bosh, man giving everything they had to the game... I'm not going to be that guy that's not ready, so yeah, I was in the best shape of my life."
Curry was just one of many big men that the Heat tried out during the Big 3 era, and he would play in 14 regular-season games for Miami in that 2011-12 season but didn't feature in the playoffs. He still got a ring out of it, though, as LeBron and the Heat clinched their first title together over the Oklahoma City Thunder. While Curry was happy to win the title, he said he was more happy for LeBron.
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"I found more joy in watching LeBron. I've never seen anybody so good."
"To watch him will us to a win on a nightly basis, especially in that Boston series man that was magical man. To me, that was more incredible and that sticks in my memory more than just you know winning a championship for sure."
LeBron was truly incredible in that Boston series and had one of his greatest outings in Game 6 with the Heat down 3-2, as he scored 45 points to lead them to victory. Curry had one of the best seats in the house and was mesmerized like so many others who saw that performance.
He would join the Dallas Mavericks the following season but played just two games, and he'd never get another opportunity to play in the league. That meant that Curry achieved quite a rare feat, as he won an NBA title despite never playing in the playoffs at any point during his 11-year career.
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