| Bulls Need Curry To Stay Authored by Kyle Trompeter - September 9, 2005 - 6:05 pm
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Those days have long been gone, and what a shame that is.
Players are packing up and leaving town, saying good riddance to their teams even after they’re coming off a great season or a resurgent season.
How about this one: A player and his agent are asking for a sign and trade. This coming after a year of the complete resurrection for a team that has been wallowing in their own awful play for years, and now they’re a contender.
It’s Eddy Curry and the Chicago Bulls.
Curry is a Chicago native who was a first round pick of the Bulls a few years back. Finally, after playing on terrible teams in his first couple of years with the Bulls, the big center from South Holland, Illinois gets to play for a winner. The Bulls made the playoffs last year and Curry was a big part of the success – no pun intended.
Unfortunately for Curry, he sustained the heart ailment and missed the playoffs. Now, after a summer of many doctor visits to get clearance to play basketball, Curry is interested in packing up and moving out of Chicago.
Why?
Why would Curry want to basically forget about everything he has help build in Chicago, possibly to go elsewhere and step into another rebuilding environment? He will have wasted his time there, and thereby leaving a franchise that is possibly on the verge of championship glory.
One of the main suitors for Curry has been the Atlanta Hawks. Not exactly a consistent NBA powerhouse I might add.
When Curry visited Atlanta in the offseason, he said it was just going through the motions of free agency, and that nothing was serious.
Tricked ya!
Now it’s coming in clear. That visit was a precursor of things to come.
But c’mon, Atlanta? Curry would be leaving a city that has possibly the best fans in sports, to go to a town where the Braves can barely sellout a playoff game? That’s ridiculous.
The next obstacle in Curry leaving town, and it’s a pretty big one, is what GM John Paxson would be able to get in return for him. The trouble with Curry is that he has almost zero trade value because of his heart condition. A healthy Curry would be able to net a lot more than what the current state of Curry will garner the Bulls.
A Bulls/Hawks deal could possibly have the Bulls receiving someone like Al Harrington. But does Harrington help the Bulls make the next step to being a championship contender? Probably not. Does Curry do that if he’s healthy? Absolutely.
Maybe another team that would be interested in Curry is the Los Angeles Lakers? Any trade of Curry will have to have the Bulls getting some size in return. So Chris Mihm is an option in this deal. Mihm is a rebounding machine who would definitely improve the Bulls’ team defense, but lots of offense would be lost.
The best case scenario with the Bulls is that Curry re-signs and resumes his quest with the team that returned to the playoffs last year for the first time since 1998.
The Bulls took a chance on Curry when they drafted him out of high school, now they need to take another chance and re-sign him and hope that he stays healthy. If they want to win a championship soon, Eddy Curry will have to be on the team.
The Bulls found out how hard it was to win in the playoffs without a scoring big man against Washington last season. The Bulls lost that series in six games. Had Curry been with the team, that series may have been over in four games with the Bulls on top. Washington had no frontcourt and Curry would have exposed it.
Paxson needs to take a line from one of the great movies of all time, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, and tell Curry, “E.C. stay home. E.C. stay home.” |
