No, no, Eddy Curry *really* was a gymnast

I say was because there's no way I can see our land-locked friend getting up on those bars now, but Eddy Curry was indeed at one time an aspiring gymnast.

What the hell am I talking about you may ask? Well, I was alerted to this bit of trivia by our friend Skeets over at Ball Don't Lie, who spied the wiki entry on Curry and found something odd:

"Curry aspired to be a gymnast and did not pick up basketball until the seventh grade when he reluctantly went out for the school team. According to his father, Eddy Curry Sr., 'For a long time, Eddy hated basketball. Being a gymnast was his backyard dream, I guess.'" Knowing the edit will be corrected and wanting to preserve this for posterity, I took a screenshot of the page..."

I decided to do a bit of investigating myself and as it turns out, much like Hakeem Olajuwon once was a Soccer Goalkeeper in the making, Curry was a young Shawn Johnson at one point. It's not a joke at all... Check out this October 2005 article by Scoop Jackson at ESPN:

Eddy Curry is a 22-year-old individual. Since he was 11, he knew what he was going to do for the rest of his life.

He was into gymnastics, but when is the last time you saw a 7-foot black male gymnast in the Olympics?

He knew that the NBA was going to be the end of his journey. It wasn't a matter of how, but how soon.

The article doesn't mention any more than that, but at least it's some verification of the seemingly impossible. Can you imagine Eddy Curry on those rings? Well look at the top of this page; you can now.

There is also a February 2008 reference on a Knicks message board to Curry's High School coach saying that he wanted to be a gymnast, here.

So, we've learnt two things today. (1) Eddy Curry wanted to be a gymnast; and (2) When you don't have Photoshop available and you're forced to use MS Paint, results are a bit like an Eddy Curry triple somersault.

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