Curry's presence will help exorcise Raptors' ghosts
Locker-room leader: Veteran provides accountability lacking since
Oakley left

Bruce Arthur
National Post

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

TORONTO - For a man who played just 208 games in a Toronto Raptors
uniform -- not even three full seasons -- Charles Oakley left a deep
impression. Two years after he was unceremoniously shuttled off to
Chicago, echoes of the outspoken Oakley continue to reverberate
around this franchise. On a team dying for guidance last season, call
it the ghost of Oak.

"I think we just really don't have that one person that can make
everyone be on all cylinders, like a Charles Oakley," said point
guard Alvin Williams back in April, assessing the wreckage of last
year's abysmal 24-58 finish. "I really believe if Charles Oakley was
here, a lot of things wouldn't have happened this year, as far as the
players' standpoint. A lot of players would have done more just
getting themselves prepared for games, preparation, stuff like that.
Oakley made sure everyone was doing what they needed to do."

Williams is hardly a man to call out his teammates, but such was the
humiliation of last season -- when other teams would openly laugh on
the bench in the waning moments of blowout wins -- that the soft-
spoken point guard felt moved to let loose. Leadership, it seems, was
in short supply.

Now, that problem may have been solved.

"I just love Michael Curry," says Raptors coach Kevin O'Neill, who
coached the small forward with the Detroit Pistons. "The player, but
more importantly, the person. He brings such professionalism and
maturity to each practice, to every single game. I'm just lucky to
have him here."

In Curry -- stolen for the over-the-hill Lindsay Hunter from the
Detroit Pistons -- the Raptors did not get a scorer, or a playmaker.
Instead, they got a soft-spoken, less-than-athletic 35-year-old who
makes the occasional jump shot, plays tough defence, and was recently
voted as the top locker-room leader in the NBA by nearly half of NBA
general managers.

"Here," says Curry, serene and sage, "the only thing that matters is
following the system and trying to get a win."

To that end, Curry shoots free throws at the end of every practice
with veteran Antonio Davis and point guard Alvin Williams before
spending a few minutes talking with O'Neill at mid-court about game
strategy. And the rest of the time, Curry embodies the old-fashioned
values of responsibility, accountability and the virtue of teamwork.

"Accountability is pretty simple," says Curry, who is also the
president of the NBA Players Association. "It's almost like rules of
society. You speed, you get a ticket."

It is such unselfish, simple, grown-up words that make a team mature.
Curry is an adult in a teenager-themed league, a man whose goal is to
be either a general manager or the president of an NBA team, a leader
in any room. He has played for winners -- Detroit, with Curry as
captain, won back-to-back Central Division titles -- and he has
played in Belgium.

Curry was not drafted, has never taken more than 15 shots in a game,
and believes that in a league where every player is a CEO, the best
way to win is to be a team. Vince Carter, and nearly every other
Raptor, will score more points. But Curry, quietly, may be the piece
than makes this squad work