Curry Deserves Better

With all the chaos coming down in Oakland with the Raiders this week, my thoughts turned to Ronald Curry, for whom the phrase “star-crossed” should have been invented.

If he hadn’t begun to wonder long ago, Curry has to be perplexed as to which power in the universe - and I don’t mean Al Davis - he torqued off years ago.

I’ve always said Hampton High’s Curry was the best high school athlete I’ve ever seen, and we all know how many brilliant ones have come out of this region in just the past 20 years.

Talent to dream of and die for. Smooth as the day was long. Multiple state football champion. All-American in football and basketball. Potential NBA player - or so the talk went - right out of high school. That was Curry the Crabber.

And yet Curry has become almost better known as a cautionary tale about how nothing in life, especially in sports, is ever guaranteed.

Think of it all.

First, Curry made that controversial college-decision switch - Virginia to North Carolina - becoming a permanent U.Va. sworn enemy. He insisted on playing football (quarterback) and basketball (point guard) for the Tar Heels - and wound up doing both inconsistently.

When it was finally time to turn pro, Curry was drafted in the seventh round by Oakland - and converted to wide receiver.

Fair enough; he was a tremendous natural athlete, he could learn.

But he struggled two years to pick up that position - then tore an Achilles’ tendon in 2004 and again 2005. Healthy again, somewhat, the past two years, Curry caught 117

passes for more than 1,400 yards - and the Raiders won six stinking games.

Now he’s got this: an owner holding a bizarre news conference to disparage his fired coach, Lane Kiffin, in an arrogant, bullying, amazingly unprofessional attempt to not pay off Kiffin’s contract.

Meanwhile here’s Curry, still just 29, who has caught only three balls in four games this season - not sure what’s wrong there. And who has a contract that sticks him in Oakland for three more years, unless Davis fires him first at some point “for cause.”

It’s more than enough to make you wonder what Chesapeake’s DeAngelo Hall was thinking - besides “Oh man, am I gonna be rich!” - when he committed to enter the Bay Area zoo over the winter.

A Pro Bowl cornerback, Hall forced a trade from Atlanta and checked into the black Raider hole for seven years.

Naturally, Hall spoke glowingly of Davis’ business and football mind after he signed, but you would too if you’d just been handed $24 million-plus guaranteed.

Especially now, over-compensation has to be the only way anyone would sign up to play with this franchise while Davis continues to careen it into the turf.

I heard some NFL expert, a former Raider executive in fact, on the radio Wednesday call Oakland the “Hotel California” of the NFL. Fitting? Well, you know the lyric:

“We are all just prisoners here of our own device.”

Right or wrong, here’s how I imagine Curry and Hall - down in a basement, dank and wet, desperately rattling their chains.