For the final 38 minutes of last night’s 48-minute game, Eddy Curry stayed on the sidelines. Benched.
Last Wednesday, coach Isiah Thomas played Curry only 9:18, claming afterward there’s “a slow phasing out of the big man in this league.” It doesn’t seem like it’s going that slowly for Curry, though. He played the opening 9:29 of last night’s 103-99 Knicks win over Toronto at the Garden, then sat for the final three-plus quarters, a total of 38:31.
Thomas insisted Curry got his extended rest thanks to “matchups.” The 6-foot-11, 285-pounder finished with just four points and no rebounds in his sub-10-minute outing.
“He’s definitely in our plans, but some nights the matchups aren’t there,” Thomas said. “This is a team that really plays small. Sometimes it’s not a good night for him matchup-wise. We have David [Lee] for that.”
Lee played more than 37 minutes, and for what it’s worth, Zach Randolph had a 43-minute night, excelling with 26 points, 15 rebounds and four assists.
Curry, who came out with 2:31 left in the first quarter and the Knicks down 18-12, anticipated being benched for the rest of the game pretty soon after he sat down initially.
“It’s happened so much that I kind of know in the second quarter how the rest of the game is going to play out,” Curry said. “I didn’t get back in the second quarter so I knew it was pretty likely that I wasn’t going to play in the third quarter, or at least early in the third quarter. And then after not playing in the third I knew I wasn’t getting in in the fourth.”
Asked if he would have preferred being traded – the NBA’s trade deadline was Thursday – rather than barely playing, Curry chuckled.
“You know what? No. I love it here. I love this team and the organization,” he said. “They kept me here for a reason and I’m going to keep playing hard and just do what I can to stay on the court.”
For his disappointing season, Curry is now scoring only 13.3 points and grabbing 4.7 rebounds while ranking just sixth on the team in minutes. As for the latter, he’s not one to gripe.
“All I can do is play the minutes that I have and try to play hard every single minute I’m out there and try to contribute to the team,” Curry said.