The Knicks were forced to go into this season LeBron-less, and now they will be missing chronic couch potato Eddy Curry.
Curry decided not to show up for precamp workouts, and now he won’t be able to show up to the regular season for about 4-6 weeks. He hurt his hamstring during practice Sunday and had an MRI on Monday that revealed a Grade 2 right hamstring strain.
The oft-injured center has played 10 games in the past two seasons for coach Mike D’Antoni. On the second day of training camp in 2008, Curry went down with a weeklong bacterial infection, and just last year, he tore a calf muscle during the first night practice.
The growing animosity between Curry and D’Antoni is just another distracting storyline for the Knicks. Curry heatedly defended his absence from training camp.
“I was here for two months, and I just wanted to go somewhere else,” Curry told the New York Post last week. “That's all. Nothing real intricate about it. I was here and left. That's what I wanted to do.”
D’Antoni was frank when asked if the precamp workouts were helpful.
"Well, that's kind of common sense," D'Antoni told The Associated Press after practice earlier this week. "If you've worked hard for a month, then, obviously it's a little bit less impact, and it was pretty violent the last two days.”
Team president Donnie Walsh has been quick to stand up Curry, who’s set to make $11.3 million this season , in hopes of moving the troubled player to another club.
D’Antoni and the Knicks have other options at center. Veteran Ronny Turiaf and Russian rookie Timofey Mozgov were brought in to add depth at the center position.
