Pros and cons

Sporting News, The, Dec 18, 2000 by Kyle Veltrop

Supersized high schooler Eddy Curry makes NBA scouts tingle. He also makes them cringe. Ready or not, he'll take his game to the big time next year.

The ball rests in the massive hands of Eddy Curry, and finally, the best high school player in America doesn't have a double- or triple-team invading his space. He has plucked a loose ball from the air, and the path to the rim is uncluttered.

One dribble, then one of his T-Rex strides. That's all it'll take for everyone to get what they've come to see: a slam so violent that it shakes the rim as if it were supported by silly string. A ridiculously athletic move from a ridiculously large body. A memorable moment to erase the heretofore sleepy play from the giant. Even the poor sap 5 feet from the basket seems eagerly awaiting initiation into the "Eddy Curry dunked on me" fraternity.

Well, that's what is supposed to happen.

Instead, Curry fumbles the ball slightly, blowing the chance for a dunk. Then, after corralling the leather, he tries to lay it in, but the ball just bounces off the rim.

Curry stands in a shower of boos from a St. Louis crowd that had come to see the center's hyped showdown against the guy many think is the nation's second-best high school player, a 7-1 future millionaire named Tyson Chandler.

Moments later, Curry fouls out, ending his lackluster night, and hears more boos that are less mean-spirited than quizzical, as in: Why make such a big deal out of this guy?

Giant appeal

Curry, who plays for Thornwood High in the south Chicago suburb of South Holland, is very big--somewhere in the vicinity of 6-11,290--and usually very good. Good enough to be the consensus No. 1 prep player in the nation. Big enough to be mentioned as the second coming of Shaquille O'Neal and as the possible first pick next summer in the NBA drapt. But against Chandler's Dominguez team (from Compton, Calif.), Curry looked like Shaq Diesel on cruise control, a 747 on autopilot. The nation's most touted senior had just 16 points and his team lost, 54-50.

That has left a lot of people, including 40-plus representatives of NBA teams who saw the game, unsure of what to make of Curry.

The official explanation for his lax play was the flu, but that did nothing to ease doubts. ("He's using his flu excuse while still in high school?" scoffs one NBA source). But even if accurate, taking it easy in games isn't a symptom Curry experiences only when sick.

"He has the tendency to coast," says another NBA insider, "and he can't get away with that in our league."

But size matters to the NBA, and therefore Curry matters. His height is between 6-10 and 7 feet, his weight anywhere from 285 to 310. Whatever. The dude is massive. The Bill Cosby-type sweater he wore a week before his game in St. Louis was large enough to clothe the entire Huxtable gang, and his shoulders are wide enough to give piggyback rides to an army of preschoolers. And then there are those hands, those pillows with fingers that make a half-pound hamburger look like a finger sandwich.

"Those hands are like the Great Lakes. Throw something in there, and he's going to catch it," says recruiting analyst Clint Jackson. "They are just so big and soft."

One NBA source says, "For a player that young to have that much size is really something. He already has an NBA-type physique. Shawn Kemp was maybe like that. Darryl Dawkins. Maybe Moses Malone."

DePaul freshman forward Andre Brown remembers going to the same camps as Curry as far back as four years ago. "Even then, the thing that always stood out about Eddy was his size. That's all a lot of the guys would talk about."

Jackson says, "His body is too big for high school, and it's probably too big for college."

But is it too big, period? His dad, Eddy Sr., jokes that tomatoes and corned beef are the only foods his son doesn't like, "but if all we had in the kitchen were tomatoes and corned beef, I wouldn't like their chances."

One of the aforementioned NBA insiders is wary that Curry's weight always could be an issue and even says a comparison to NBA journeyman Oliver Miller, a skilled big man who is better known as the punch line for the league's weight jokes, is more apt than a comparison to O'Neal.

Being that big is part of Curry's allure, though. When someone his size does something he has no business doing, it creates cases of lovesickness that last forever Brick Oettinger, who has been analyzing basketball talent for more than 20 years, can give every detail of a one-handed alley-oop slam that Curry pulled off this summer against 6-9 Missouri recruit Robert Whaley at the Show-Me State Games.

"Robert Whaley is like 250 pounds, and he tried pushing Curry out of bounds with his forearm," Oettinger says. "Curry had his side to the basket, and he caught it on the left side of the rim, moved his elbow to the right and did a backhand slam. And his left hand never came within 2 feet of the ball. It was the most physically impressive play I've seen in the last year."

To accompany his power, Curry also can shoot from the perimeter (and from the free-throw line, throwing another rock at the Shaq comparisons), and he has a wide array of inside moves and terrific body control. That helps answer: Why did everyone make such a big deal out of this guy?