A recent hospital stay for a bacterial infection was catalyst for one of the weirder fluff pieces in recent NY Post history, in which Peter Vescey composed a mash note to Knicks F Eddy Curry Suppression Ring (“he may have an extra layer of fat . . . but it’s on top of muscle…it’s infantile to measure him in terms of pounds; every weighty body part is in proportion to his configuration.”)
I told Curry word had it a contaminated needle may have been the origin of his mysterious illness, that a trip to the tattoo parlor three or four days prior to the Knicks’ assembly triggered the trouble.
Confirmation denied!
“You’re telling me something I haven’t heard before,” Curry said. “I did get a tattoo, but it was three or four weeks before camp, not days.”
I was down to my last morsel of hearsay. I gently led my witness. “Supposedly, the area around that tattoo was red and open.”
“No, by then it had healed. The redness and the swelling had gone away,” Curry said.
His mater-of-fact demeanor convinced me he was sincere, so that was the end to that line of questioning. Then again, as long as we’re on the subject of tats, it’s hard to believe anyone flaunts more ink-per-square-inch than Curry.
If you’re scoring at home, the Nuggets (Allen Iverson, J.R. Smith, Kenyon Martin, etc.) are the undisputed league-leading team, and that’s without Marcus Camby.
Curry is unable to tell me the exact number of tattoos that decorate almost every nook and cranny of his vast terrain, which, by the way, contrary to popular prejudice, is not too flabby; the 6-11 boulder is merely massive from back-to-front, his legs are like pilings, his arms like turnstiles, his fingers are as big as my wrist. That’s what makes him impossible to defend in the ditch, one-on-one; once he plants it’s too late to pray and plead for help.
“I’ve got about 50 tattoos,” he estimates. “I used to think I had more than anybody else in the league, but I think J.R. Smith has me beat. His tattoos have tattoos.”
I asked Curry about his last one, where it’s situated and what it says. He lifted up his right arm and right below the pit is a line by Lil’ Wayne, Eddy’s favorite rapper, from his current best-selling album, “The Carter III: What’s a goon to a goblin?”