The Knicks won a game I could barely muster any interest in tonight, beating the Bucks 118-113.  It was completely sloppy (we wondered if someone would have a boxscore of 10 TO/10 steals tonight), with the Knicks starting Nate Robinson and Mardy Collins due to Stephon Marbury's injury.  With the playoffs essentially out of the picture, Marbury is resting a sprained toe.
Here are notes on this game:

-Nate Robinson made a couple of passes from his knees tonight.  He's also incredibly awful at guarding the opposing team's point, despite being faster on his feet.  Nate's goal for the summer should be to learn how to play man to man defense.

-Frye had zero points in 14 minutes.  The way he is playing less and less we expect him to come down with a mysterious injury any day now, and fully support Isiah trading him for a future draft pick.  We say trade him to a team needing a PF for their 2008 or 2009 #1.  Addition by subtraction.  Plus more assets for the '08/09 seasons.

Those steal/TO totals?  Well, Collins had 7 turnovers, and Patterson had 7 steals off bad entry passes.  Those two are directly related.

Eddie Curry will now command your attention, please.  He had a quietly monstrous game, hitting 11 of his first 12 shots for 30 points through 3 quarters, then had a hard time getting the ball in the fourth (a couple of nice putbacks, though).  Then, with the Knicks inbounding the ball with 0.9 seconds left and down by three, he received the pass in the corner, took a perfect looking three (with his man's hand in his grill), and nailed it to tie the game.  He didn't even seemed surprise or excited, while his teammates jumped all over him.  Pretty f*cking sweet, Eddy.

And that's why Eddy has earned some strong praise.  Eddy finished 17-20 (85%!) for 43 points.  And now we will make an argument which might seem as though we lost our minds, but we are going to say and if you disagree let us know.  We think Eddy is better than Michael Redd.

Ridiculous?  Let's get it straight.  Eddy Curry is a one-dimensional, no defense, no rebounding fat out-of-shape, Sbarro's-loving scrub.  Redd is an All-Star.  Well, Michael Redd is also a subpar rebounder and passer for his position.  He's actually probably the worst rebounding starting SF in the league , and his assist numbers are so-so at best. He's subpar defensively, too.  He is essentially a scorer, and a good one at that.

He's a great shooter, one of the best and most efficient in the league.  Yet despite being one of the most efficient shooters in the league, he will never shoot even 50% on his FGA, while Curry is 60% from the field.   We will argue that Redd is as one-dimensional as Curry, and that Curry is a more effective scoring option.  Not only does Curry hit 60% from the field, he gets fouled more than all but three players in the league.  A pass in to Curry is far more likely to result in points than any other option in the league; even when Curry misses a shot, the double teams he draws tend to leave the rim open for the Knicks to grab offensive bounds, which is how David Lee and now Balkman are making some of their points.

Further proof: Michael Redd's franchise, despite having some talented players (Mo Williams, Andrew Bogut) is doing far worse than Curry's Knicks this season.  Of course, the Bucks have a bright feature - they will undoubtedly add a top player in the draft this season.  Or better yet they will trade the pick, which will probably be Durant,  plus Bobby Simmons, to the Suns for Shawn Marion and their three #1's.  That's our recommendation. 

We came to this conclusion because we were trying to figure out if Curry is really a franchise player.  We decided that "franchise player" has to be defined first - our definition is someone that you can revolve a playoff team around.  We conclude that Curry is not truly that yet, and that Redd is definitely not one, either.  Redd could end up on a playoff team, for sure, and be the basis of the offense (like he is in Milwaukee), but he won't command a double team.  He won't get others involved in the offense.  And he's hardly unique - in fact, he plays the deepest position in the NBA (SF), which has lots of pure scorers:  McGrady, Carter, Pierce, Anthony, Rashard Lewis and Caron Butler, plus AI2, Gerald Wallace, AK47, Ron Artest and Josh Smith are all defensive-oriented players who can also score as needed.   These are all superior SFs to Redd, plus Lamar Odom, too.  Redd is a rich man's Mike Miller.

Is Curry that franchise player, by our definition?  No, not yet. But he's very close to being it.  He's also significantly cheaper than Redd ($16.5 million for Redd, $10 for Curry) and younger.  Bottom line: Curry has to be more valuable than Redd in this league.

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