On WFAN: Isiah Thomas Puts His Spin On The Eddy Curry Trade
NEW YORK (WFAN) -- Isiah Thomas is back at MSG as president of the New York Liberty. He joined Boomer & Carton on Wednesday morning, it was awkward at times, and you can read all about it here.
An interesting sidebar: Thomas is still defending his record with the Knicks, including the wildly unpopular Eddy Curry trade in 2005. He essentially gave up two lottery picks among other pieces for the big man -- as co-host Boomer Esiason pointed out -- though he doesn't see it that way.
Thomas: Wait a minute, wait a minute, Boomer, wait. I can't let you just throw that out there unchallenged. I had a swap. It was a flip-flop, it was not a trade. Everyone says you traded two draft picks for Eddy Curry, which is not the truth. Boomer, I drafted -- I had a first-round pick in every draft that I was there. Now, the flip-flop was for a gentleman by the name of Tyrus Thomas that the Chicago Bulls drafted, who is no longer in the league.
Esiason: Yep, we know.
Thomas: The trade ended up being Eddy Curry and a gentleman by the name of Wilson Chandler for Tyrus Thomas. That was the Eddy Curry trade. There's no two draft picks that were traded. So let's make sure that's clear.
Boomer: So the lottery picks that were swapped -- or traded, or swapped if you want to say -- did not turn out to be LaMarcus Aldridge and Joakim Noah?
Thomas: Well, we had two gentlemen, one by the name of David Lee and Channing Frye at that time, and it was my assessment that those two power forwards that we had, I wanted to give them time to develop and grow. Aldridge and Noah were coming out of college and later on I made the determination that I could move Channing Frye for Zach Randolph. So I ended up with Zach Randolph and David Lee, and by the way, they both became All-Stars.
Isiah Thomas
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There you have it, according to Zeke.
He's partly right, in that the Bulls drafted Aldridge with the second overall pick in 2006, acquired from New York, and immediately traded him to Portland for Thomas. The next year, Chicago swapped first-round picks with the Knicks, as per the terms of the Curry trade, and took Noah at No. 9. The Knicks were bumped down 14 spots and selected Chandler.
But here's the reality: the Knicks would have been in position to draft current stars Aldridge and Noah had they not traded for Curry, who's been out of the league for years.
Then again, would they have been Thomas' picks?
