But in Mike D’Antoni’s offense, Eddy won’t just plant himself on the block and stay there once he makes it upcourt. Bigs in MD’A's system get down the floor, post up quickly, and if they don’t get the ball, roll or move to set a pick before re-establishing themselves down low, if necessary.That’s a lot going on for a guy who’s been used to simply catching the ball, getting swarmed and deciding (often with some difficulty) what to do with it. And who, despite better than average footwork for a big man, still isn’t considered a ballet dancer.
MD’A thinks that ultimately, an effective Eddy will draw double teams and open up the perimeter when he gets the ball. But unless Eddy has morphed into Bill Walton or Arvydas Sabonis during his layoff, getting the ball back out to open shooters might take some doing, because he’s never even averaged one assist per game.
I think if we look to play inside out with Eddie Curry that is going to be a recipe for disaster and frustration. We need to use the ability to shoot on the outside to open up Curry on the inside. Curry is not going to consistently make good passes out of the post to feed the shooters or cutters.
The most effective way to use Curry would be to spread the floor with Gallo or Harrington as the 4 man when Curry is in the game and hopefully give Curry the space to go after rebounds and putbacks using his size and quickness forcing opponents to either choose sag off of the 3 pt shooters to stop Curry or pressure the 3 pt shooters freeing up Curry to play one on one basketball. Of course also using the pick and roll, and getting inside feeds from PG penetration if we ever get any.
We should avoid posting Curry up unless unavoidable or a huge mismatch. Curry is never going to be skilled like Shaq or Duncan in the post. But he can be a good off the ball non play drawn up for type of center.
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11/18/2009 3:02 PM