Eddy Curry: Big Time Season Awaits

By Dan Barto, Director of Player Development PTC and The Basketball Academy 

Players develop differently depending on their situation.  Yao, Shaq, Big Z and Dwight Howard were all rail thin players as youngsters that became dominant quickly through heavy minutes and heavy lifting.  The route that Eddy Curry is taking to becoming an unstoppable force is different, and different for multiple reasons.  I am predicting a big year for Eddy, and I will explain why this is a “no brainer”.

Unlike the other true centers mentioned earlier, Eddy has a more endomorphic build.  This build obviously makes carrying extra weight very difficult.  At the veteran age of 24,  Eddy’s body will only continue to develop more stability and power.  In the theories of performance training there is a pyramid that has mobility and stability as the base of being an athlete followed by strength, coordination, and power.  At the top of the pyramid is skill enhancement.  Yes, Eddy Curry is skilled but I believe that last year was the first time Eddy began to use his strengths of lower body leverage to get better position and simplify his game.  He now has “old man” type of strength and he is learning how to properly use it on the court with ball in hand.

The second piece that ties into this is the “voice”.  In Eddy’s first 5 years as a player he played for 5 different coaches and who-knows how many assistants and AAU know-it-alls.  The “voice” was never consistent.  He was young and in his hometown where he had all of the distractions of being a hometown player. 

Enter Mark Aguirre.  Mark works exclusively with the post players and knows his stuff when it comes to using the body in the post to score and get second chance opportunities.  Results were there last year and Eddy should continue to move forward with the same voice and feedback.  If he is locked in, this should be the big jump year.

The Knicks are not going to defend many people this year and I would look for them to play is the 100’s night in and night out.  The Z-BO affect should leave Curry in many isolation 1 on 1 situations with the second post defender on him.  This should also mean less double teams, allowing more easy angles to the hoop, and creating less turnovers from Curry.  Yes, Randolph will have volume shooting nights, but the old man strength and a better understanding of using his body should allow Eddy to create more offensive rebounding opportunities and easier scores.

Lastly, and most importantly, Eddy had the traumatic event of being robbed at gun point in his own home.  That experience should be an eye opener off the court and get him to better appreciate the opportunities he has, and I look for him to play with a different type of emotion.