threattonature
Veteran
https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/eddy-curry-nba-the-truth-was-way-worse
People got jokes.
Everyone, it seems like.
Jokes for days.
When the topic is Eddy Curry, the jokes just come easy. It’s been that way for more than a decade. And even after all these years that I’ve been out of the league, when my name comes up online or on social media or whatever, somehow a bunch of people … still got jokes.
It’s like … Eddy Curry?
Do you remember how fat that guy was? OMG OMG LOLOLOL.
Or
How do you play in the NBA and get your house foreclosed on, bro? Like, wow. Come on, son. Hahaha.
Or
I heard that dude actually tried to have sex with the guy who was his personal driver. LOLOLOL. WTF, bro? Dude had issues.
And then basically everyone just LOLs together online and has a good time at my expense.
Hahahaha. LOL, bro. HAHAHA. Fat-ass, broke-ass Eddy Curry. HAHAHAHAHAHA. What a joke!
I’m 37 now, a grown-ass man. So I can take it. People can say whatever they want. I’ll live.
But at the same time … you know what? People really do need to know something.
People need to realize that….
Not everything is a joke, bro.
The crying-laughing emoji doesn’t apply to literally everything in the universe. Not everything is hilarious.
I mean, you know what isn’t funny? Here you go … here’s something that isn’t funny.
January 24, 2009. I’m with the Knicks. On the road in Philly, middle of the game. I’m sitting on the bench in street clothes when I feel a tap on my shoulder.
“Yo, Eddy! They need you in the back. You gotta go to the trainer’s room.”
I figure it’s something to do with why I wasn’t playing, but when I get back there one of my friends with the Knicks comes up to me legit crying — like his eyes are all red and there are tears on his face. I have no idea what’s up. He just tells me to call my assistant but won’t say anything more.
So I grab my phone and dial.
When my guy picks up, I ask what’s going on, and there’s about a one- or two-second pause. Then it’s….
“Bro, Nova is dead, bro. They killed her.”
You hear words like that and … I’m telling you … it’s the furthest thing from funny.
“I’m here on the scene now. There’s blood everywhere, bro. I think the baby may be dead, too.”
That shyt right there, yeah … that shyt is not funny.
A lot of people don’t know about Nova.
I saw her on and off for a few years while I was with the Knicks. We had two kids together.
On the day Nova was murdered — shot down in cold blood back home in Chicago — one of the many people who didn’t know about her was my wife, Patrice.
Patrice also didn’t know about the children I’d had with Nova — my 10-month-old daughter, Ava, and her three-year-old brother, Noah.
I kept it a secret. All of it. For years.
So as I’m on the phone learning that my infant daughter and her mother had just been murdered … I’m also coming to grips with the fact that my marriage of nearly four years would almost certainly be over.
There would be no more covering anything up.
All I really felt like I could do at that point was cry.
I just stood there bawling my eyes out about … everything.
Then, in about 10 or 15 seconds, stuff started happening a mile a minute — phone ringing off the hook, information overload, funeral plans, and on and on.
Before I knew it, I was on a plane flying back to New York, and even just within those few hours more and more details became clear. I found out that my son Noah was right there when his mother and sister were shot. But he was so little that he didn’t really understand what had happened. He’d tried to wake up his mom after the shooting, so when the officers went in and found him there, he had blood all over him. He actually laid down next to her and had fallen asleep.
Noah hadn’t been able to wake up his mom or his sister, and probably thought they were sleeping, so he went to sleep, too.
When I asked if the police knew who did it, I learned that they thought it was Nova’s lawyer. He had been overseeing the child support payments, and she’d been dating him. In the past she’d warned me that he was dangerous. Dude actually brought a gun to her baby shower for Ava because he thought I might be there.
I didn’t pay that stuff no mind, though. It was like: I’m in the league. People know my name. No one is running up on me and shooting me.
And now I’m hearing that this guy had just murdered Nova and our daughter. They’re gone. Never coming back. Like … gone gone.
Forever.
Living, breathing human beings just … gone.
And my little boy saw it go down. He’s three years old and he sees his family get gunned down. He’s got their blood all over himself.
So yeah, man….
Just totally, totally … not funny.
Actually, you know what? Strike that. I shouldn’t say that.
Because dudes online will probably find some way to make jokes about all that, too.
People, man … they got jokes.
One of the things you always hear people say about guys like me is….
No one told you that you had to be famous.
People say that all the time. It’s like….
You wanted this.
I didn’t make you do this. You’re the one who decided to play in the league. You knew what the NBA was all about.
This is what you chose.
And when someone says that stuff, just on the face of it, generally, I’m not gonna lie: It makes sense. It seems like a reasonable thing to think.
But at the same time, let me just say … hear me out for a few more minutes here because….
Maybe it’s not always that simple.
Thinking back on it now, I honestly didn’t even want to play basketball as a kid.
You know how you sometimes hear about a guy who had a mini basketball in his crib as a kid, or guys who were dunking on those little plastic hoops as soon as they could walk — guys who you just knew what they were gonna be? Well … that wasn’t me.
Basketball wasn’t my lifelong dream.
When I was a kid, I just wanted to play video games and ride bikes and hang out with my friends. I actually tried to avoid hoops.
What did me in, though, was that I was tall. When middle school rolled around, my friends started talking constantly about how I should play basketball. Every day they’d pressure me to try out for the seventh-grade team. And, for a while there, I actually managed to resist.
But I was taller than the teachers at that point — 6′ 5″, 6′ 6″ maybe.
What could I do?
People would look at me and they just weren’t trying to take no for an answer. “Oh no,” they’d say, “you’re playing hoops, man. There’s no way someone as big as you is not playing. You are going to play basketball.”
So, you know … I played basketball.
Dirksen Middle School. Calumet City, Illinois. The Senators.
When I went to the tryout, I didn’t even know how to play the game. I was terrible. I had no clue what I was doing out there. I was so bad that when I made the team I didn’t tell anyone in my family. I didn’t want them to see how awful I was. I mean, I was probably the worst middle school basketball player in the history of the world.
But goddamn was I tall.
So, before you know it, word gets out about the huge kid playing at Dirksen, and I have AAU dudes showing up at my house to recruit me and meet my parents. And me, I’m just … totally not into it.
The first one of those visits, I’ll never forget it, while the coaches are there making a pitch to my mom, I’m sitting on the floor….
Playing with a toy train set.
For real, bro. I’m literally on the floor putting a train set together while these guys are talking about how great a player I could be if I joined their travel team and really concentrated fully on basketball.
The whole time, I’m fiddling with those train tracks just kind of thinking to myself, That sounds like a terrible idea. I’m not signing up for no AAU team. That seems like a damn job.
It was like….
How about you just let me play with my trains and leave me be?
My mom, though … she wasn’t having it.
She made me go over to the gym and join that team.
And, to be fair, I ended up enjoying it. Everything kind of just snowballed from there. I ended up falling in love with basketball.
Eventually.
But it definitely wasn’t love at first sight.
When that Knicks team plane landed from Philly and I walked into our house, Patrice was just like….
I honestly don’t even know how to describe it exactly.
She was basically exactly like what you’d think a good woman would be like when she’s just found out that her husband has been lying to her for years. And, I mean, I don’t blame her — I had been a terrible husband for a long time by that point.
We were living in Westchester, New York, at the time, in the Ritz-Carlton apartments, where my boy Q, Quentin Richardson, also had a few places. So after Patrice made it clear that I was not welcome that night, Q told me I could use his apartment downstairs on the fifth floor.
I remember I walked in and basically went numb.
I was there, but at the same time, I was … barely there. It was no lights, no TV, no cooking meals … nothing. Just sitting completely still. Not knowing what to do or how to move forward — just me sitting there in the dark, shades drawn.
Day and night.
The only thing I really remember doing over those next few days was signing off to release Ava’s body to the funeral home so they could prepare her for the service and burial. Beyond that, it was just….
Darkness.
I blamed myself.
I still do.
As a father — as a man — you’re responsible for the children you bring into this world, no matter what the situation is. You need to be accountable and look out for those little ones. I needed to do that. I needed to protect my daughter.
And I didn’t.
People got jokes.
Everyone, it seems like.
Jokes for days.
When the topic is Eddy Curry, the jokes just come easy. It’s been that way for more than a decade. And even after all these years that I’ve been out of the league, when my name comes up online or on social media or whatever, somehow a bunch of people … still got jokes.
It’s like … Eddy Curry?
Do you remember how fat that guy was? OMG OMG LOLOLOL.
Or
How do you play in the NBA and get your house foreclosed on, bro? Like, wow. Come on, son. Hahaha.
Or
I heard that dude actually tried to have sex with the guy who was his personal driver. LOLOLOL. WTF, bro? Dude had issues.
And then basically everyone just LOLs together online and has a good time at my expense.
Hahahaha. LOL, bro. HAHAHA. Fat-ass, broke-ass Eddy Curry. HAHAHAHAHAHA. What a joke!
I’m 37 now, a grown-ass man. So I can take it. People can say whatever they want. I’ll live.
But at the same time … you know what? People really do need to know something.
People need to realize that….
Not everything is a joke, bro.
The crying-laughing emoji doesn’t apply to literally everything in the universe. Not everything is hilarious.
I mean, you know what isn’t funny? Here you go … here’s something that isn’t funny.
January 24, 2009. I’m with the Knicks. On the road in Philly, middle of the game. I’m sitting on the bench in street clothes when I feel a tap on my shoulder.
“Yo, Eddy! They need you in the back. You gotta go to the trainer’s room.”
I figure it’s something to do with why I wasn’t playing, but when I get back there one of my friends with the Knicks comes up to me legit crying — like his eyes are all red and there are tears on his face. I have no idea what’s up. He just tells me to call my assistant but won’t say anything more.
So I grab my phone and dial.
When my guy picks up, I ask what’s going on, and there’s about a one- or two-second pause. Then it’s….
“Bro, Nova is dead, bro. They killed her.”
You hear words like that and … I’m telling you … it’s the furthest thing from funny.
“I’m here on the scene now. There’s blood everywhere, bro. I think the baby may be dead, too.”
That shyt right there, yeah … that shyt is not funny.
A lot of people don’t know about Nova.
I saw her on and off for a few years while I was with the Knicks. We had two kids together.
On the day Nova was murdered — shot down in cold blood back home in Chicago — one of the many people who didn’t know about her was my wife, Patrice.
Patrice also didn’t know about the children I’d had with Nova — my 10-month-old daughter, Ava, and her three-year-old brother, Noah.
I kept it a secret. All of it. For years.
So as I’m on the phone learning that my infant daughter and her mother had just been murdered … I’m also coming to grips with the fact that my marriage of nearly four years would almost certainly be over.
There would be no more covering anything up.
All I really felt like I could do at that point was cry.
I just stood there bawling my eyes out about … everything.
Then, in about 10 or 15 seconds, stuff started happening a mile a minute — phone ringing off the hook, information overload, funeral plans, and on and on.
Before I knew it, I was on a plane flying back to New York, and even just within those few hours more and more details became clear. I found out that my son Noah was right there when his mother and sister were shot. But he was so little that he didn’t really understand what had happened. He’d tried to wake up his mom after the shooting, so when the officers went in and found him there, he had blood all over him. He actually laid down next to her and had fallen asleep.
Noah hadn’t been able to wake up his mom or his sister, and probably thought they were sleeping, so he went to sleep, too.
When I asked if the police knew who did it, I learned that they thought it was Nova’s lawyer. He had been overseeing the child support payments, and she’d been dating him. In the past she’d warned me that he was dangerous. Dude actually brought a gun to her baby shower for Ava because he thought I might be there.
I didn’t pay that stuff no mind, though. It was like: I’m in the league. People know my name. No one is running up on me and shooting me.
And now I’m hearing that this guy had just murdered Nova and our daughter. They’re gone. Never coming back. Like … gone gone.
Forever.
Living, breathing human beings just … gone.
And my little boy saw it go down. He’s three years old and he sees his family get gunned down. He’s got their blood all over himself.
So yeah, man….
Just totally, totally … not funny.
Actually, you know what? Strike that. I shouldn’t say that.
Because dudes online will probably find some way to make jokes about all that, too.
People, man … they got jokes.
One of the things you always hear people say about guys like me is….
No one told you that you had to be famous.
People say that all the time. It’s like….
You wanted this.
I didn’t make you do this. You’re the one who decided to play in the league. You knew what the NBA was all about.
This is what you chose.
And when someone says that stuff, just on the face of it, generally, I’m not gonna lie: It makes sense. It seems like a reasonable thing to think.
But at the same time, let me just say … hear me out for a few more minutes here because….
Maybe it’s not always that simple.
Thinking back on it now, I honestly didn’t even want to play basketball as a kid.
You know how you sometimes hear about a guy who had a mini basketball in his crib as a kid, or guys who were dunking on those little plastic hoops as soon as they could walk — guys who you just knew what they were gonna be? Well … that wasn’t me.
Basketball wasn’t my lifelong dream.
When I was a kid, I just wanted to play video games and ride bikes and hang out with my friends. I actually tried to avoid hoops.
What did me in, though, was that I was tall. When middle school rolled around, my friends started talking constantly about how I should play basketball. Every day they’d pressure me to try out for the seventh-grade team. And, for a while there, I actually managed to resist.
But I was taller than the teachers at that point — 6′ 5″, 6′ 6″ maybe.
What could I do?
People would look at me and they just weren’t trying to take no for an answer. “Oh no,” they’d say, “you’re playing hoops, man. There’s no way someone as big as you is not playing. You are going to play basketball.”
So, you know … I played basketball.
Dirksen Middle School. Calumet City, Illinois. The Senators.
When I went to the tryout, I didn’t even know how to play the game. I was terrible. I had no clue what I was doing out there. I was so bad that when I made the team I didn’t tell anyone in my family. I didn’t want them to see how awful I was. I mean, I was probably the worst middle school basketball player in the history of the world.
But goddamn was I tall.
So, before you know it, word gets out about the huge kid playing at Dirksen, and I have AAU dudes showing up at my house to recruit me and meet my parents. And me, I’m just … totally not into it.
The first one of those visits, I’ll never forget it, while the coaches are there making a pitch to my mom, I’m sitting on the floor….
Playing with a toy train set.
For real, bro. I’m literally on the floor putting a train set together while these guys are talking about how great a player I could be if I joined their travel team and really concentrated fully on basketball.
The whole time, I’m fiddling with those train tracks just kind of thinking to myself, That sounds like a terrible idea. I’m not signing up for no AAU team. That seems like a damn job.
It was like….
How about you just let me play with my trains and leave me be?
My mom, though … she wasn’t having it.
She made me go over to the gym and join that team.
And, to be fair, I ended up enjoying it. Everything kind of just snowballed from there. I ended up falling in love with basketball.
Eventually.
But it definitely wasn’t love at first sight.
When that Knicks team plane landed from Philly and I walked into our house, Patrice was just like….
I honestly don’t even know how to describe it exactly.
She was basically exactly like what you’d think a good woman would be like when she’s just found out that her husband has been lying to her for years. And, I mean, I don’t blame her — I had been a terrible husband for a long time by that point.
We were living in Westchester, New York, at the time, in the Ritz-Carlton apartments, where my boy Q, Quentin Richardson, also had a few places. So after Patrice made it clear that I was not welcome that night, Q told me I could use his apartment downstairs on the fifth floor.
I remember I walked in and basically went numb.
I was there, but at the same time, I was … barely there. It was no lights, no TV, no cooking meals … nothing. Just sitting completely still. Not knowing what to do or how to move forward — just me sitting there in the dark, shades drawn.
Day and night.
The only thing I really remember doing over those next few days was signing off to release Ava’s body to the funeral home so they could prepare her for the service and burial. Beyond that, it was just….
Darkness.
I blamed myself.
I still do.
As a father — as a man — you’re responsible for the children you bring into this world, no matter what the situation is. You need to be accountable and look out for those little ones. I needed to do that. I needed to protect my daughter.
And I didn’t.
Last edited: