I'm curious why someone would say Curry having a season ending knee injury is great news.
Eddy Curry has been Coached wrong his entire career except for his last season with the Chicago Bulls when Scottie Pippin became part of the Bulls Coaching Staff and "6.11 Curry & 7.0 Chandler" became the first three quarters Frontcourt Force to reckon with. And having Rookies Deng or Nocioni at the SF spot made the Bulls oposition think twice about doubling Curry.
The Knicks Coaching Staff went hay wire at the hiring of HOF Coach Lenny Wilkins. And hiring the HOF Player Hater Coach Larry Brown a year after the USA Team condemed him as being finished really brought extreme havoc into the Knicks Coaching Staff and organization.
Curry best season in the NBA was when he played beside a Defensive PF in Chandler & Davis with a rebounding slasher SF Deng or Nocioni.
The Knicks got a defensive PF in Randolph Morris this offseason to play alongside Curry. And had three rebounding slasher SF in Lee, Balkman, and Chandler to play alongside of the Curry & Morris frontcourt.
When Portland drafted Center Greg Oden, and traded PF-Zach Randolph that draft night, then paid Francis a $30 million buy out.
What does that say about Zach Randolph? other than he is damage GOODS.
The Knicks coaching staff had two seasons to be knowledgable and wide aware of whom Eddy Curry needed beside him as his main PF for this 2007-8 season (Lee or Morris, or both together).
The conditions on the trade for Zach Randolph (and why Portland traded him) automatically put Zach Randolph in the position to come off the Knick bench alongside Balkman, Nate, and Chandler.
The poor defense that was shown from both Curry & Zach during the Preseason games, should've had the Knicks coaching-staff working with the frontcourt Tandem of Curry & Morris, and Zach & Morris.
That would've gave the Knicks the oportunity to run big lineups early in the season putting Lee at SF, and Balkman, Chandler, or Q.Rich as SG with Nate or Collins at the PG. By midseason lineups with Nate, Crawford, Q.Rich, Chandler, and Balkman, could've been dangerous 8 minute running lineups.
If you want Curry to be the starting center, you need two things.
1. A defense oriented PF that can help out, rebound, and block a lot of shots.
2. A SF and SG that can hit from the outside (including 3 pointers) at a high enough percentage that it makes double teaming Curry very difficult.
The strategy is then to dump it into Curry and allow him to score his 20 or so points per night (like he started doing again as soon as Randolph was out) and to have him kick it out IF he gets doubled to someone that can actually hit from the outside in the upper 40% range.
The Knicks suffered badly for two reasons this year.
1. Randolph was the worst possible player to put next to Curry (even though he's a legit 20-10 guy and could be valuable elsewhere) because he shares many of Curry's weaknesses.
2. QRich couldn't hit the broad side of a barn and they have no SF that is a good outside shooter. Guys like Balkman are good, but not with a guy like Curry on the floor unless there are other good outside shooters on the court. Lee can't shoot from outside and Crawford takes way too many bad shots. We have none.
Randolph is a better all around player than Curry, but IMHO, if we can move Randolph and get either a dominant defensive PF or sharp shooting SF it would be better than getting rid of the wide load.
Morris is not the answer at PF (as someone suggested). He's a center. If he develops into a better player than Curry that's great. We can play him and bench Curry, but he's not really a PF.
Perhaps Chandler will develop into a good outside shooting SF.
That's what these last few games are about. We need to see what Morrris and Chandler can do so we know who to draft and what to trade for.