Spurs waive Eddy Curry

Eddy Curry played 14 games for the Heat last year, starting once. (D. Clarke Evans/NBAE/Getty Images)

By Ben Golliver

The NBA's most intriguing reclamation project just got cut.

The Spurs released veteran center Eddy Curry on Tuesday. The move comes after Curry, 29, dropped 20 pounds over the summer, according to coach Gregg Popovich, no easy task given reports that the former Bulls and Knicks center had already lost 100 pounds before the 2011-12 season after playing just 10 combined games during the previous three seasons.

Curry was in camp with the Spurs after spending last season with the title-winning Miami Heat. He played just 83 minutes in 14 regular-season games and didn't appear in the playoffs, though, and recently told the Sun-Sentinel he wasn't in any rush to get his championship ring.

"I didn't play a single minute in the whole joint," he said of being held out of last season's postseason run to the championship. "So I'm not in any rush to get that ring."

"It was frustrating. It was bittersweet," he said. "Got a ring out of it, but it definitely wasn't the year I was looking forward to and wasn't what I worked for."

With Miami headed for position-less, free-flowing small ball, the lumbering Curry could see the writing on the wall. In San Antonio, his presence would have amounted to end-of-the-bench depth, as the Spurs' big man rotation goes five deep without him: Tim Duncan, Boris Diaw, Tiago Splitter, DeJuan Blair and Matt Bonner. In a best-case scenario, Curry would have been called on to foul Dwight Howard, hard and repeatedly.