Former New York Knick Eddy Curry has a new opponent: antisemitism.
The ex-NBAer, who played five seasons with the Knicks and won an NBA championship with the LeBron James-led Miami Heat in 2012, has been advocating for the release of 1-year-old Kfir Bibas, the Israeli boy who has spent the bulk of his life in Hamas captivity.
Bibas was kidnapped along with his brother Ariel, 4, and their parents, Shiri and Yarden Bibas, by the terror group during the Oct. 7 attack.
Curry, 41, recently traveled to the Holy Land with his wife and met with members of the Bibas family as part of the Sports Speaks Up campaign for Project Max, an organization that fights antisemitism, racism and intolerance through sports.
Curry, who was drafted in 2001 by his hometown Chicago Bulls, “adopted” Kfir Bibas and has made the infant’s release a priority.
“Back when I was in New York, I lost a child to gun violence. Ever since then … it just reshaped my world. To actually go through a loss like that … to know that there’s hostages and that there’s children involved, that just hit me in a certain place,” Curry told The Post.
Curry’s ex-girlfriend, Nova Henry, 24, and infant daughter Ava were shot dead in 2009 by Henry’s attorney, Frederick Goings, who was representing her in a child-support case against Curry.
Goings and Henry had become romantically involved.
“We want their children to come back home, just like we would want our children to come back home. There are children just like ours here in America that are not home, that are being exposed to some of the most heinous acts anyone can imagine,” Curry, who retired from the hardwood in 2012, said.
“On the 5th of August, Ariel, the oldest child [turns 5]. Unfortunately, we need to plan, again, another huge event with balloons and cakes and singers … but it’s gonna be without the birthday boy,” Shiri Bibas’ cousin Yosi Shnaider said. “In the beginning we started counting the hours since the kidnap, then we started counting the days, then the months, in two months it’s going to be a year.”
“The common goal here is to bring as many as the hostages home as we possibly can,” Curry added.