Thank You Channing

In the midst of the Cavaliers’ recent improved play, a story that is far more significant than any win or loss broke over the weekend. Channing Frye, the team’s veteran stretch five and locker room leader, announced that he would be retiring at the end of the season. While he will leave the NBA having averaged less than nine points over 13 seasons (not counting the 2012-13 season, which he missed), but there is so much more to Frye than that.

Selected by the New York Knicks with the eighth overall pick in the 2005 NBA Draft, Frye came to the NBA after a successful college career as a member of the Arizona Wildcats under coach Lute Olson. While Frye had a solid rookie season, earning NBA All-Rookie First Team honors, he wasn’t long for New York. The Knicks traded Frye to the Portland Trailblazers, where his career took a step back. After averaging just 4.2 points while shooting 42.3% from the floor in 11.8 minutes per game, Frye became a free agent. Four years into his career, Frye hadn’t really established himself in the NBA, but that was about to change.

In July of 2009, Frye signed with the Phoenix Suns. During a practice early in the year, then Suns coach Alvin Gentry chastised Frye for taking a long two point attempt during a game of three-on-three. His message was to take a step back beyond the arc and shoot the three. Given the green light to bomb away from deep changed Frye’s career. During his first four seasons in the NBA Frye took a total of 70 three point attempts. In his first season with the Suns, Frye attempted 392 threes. Frye shot 43.9% from deep that season and emerged as an important part of a Suns team that made it all the way to the Western Conference Finals. Frye was such a proficient shooter from deep that he was invited to the three-point contest at NBA All-Star Weekend, becoming the first center invited to participate in 13 years.

Frye re-signed with the Suns on a five-year deal in 2010. He had two more productive seasons as a stretch big who started more often than not as the Suns began a rebuild that is still going on today. Frye was making good money and had a solid role with his team when his life was changed forever. While getting his physical in the summer of 2012, team doctors discovered that Frye had an enlarged heart due to a condition called dilated cardiomyopathy (although Frye has since questioned this diagnosis). Frye missed the entire season as his basketball career took a backseat to his health. Fry has open about his battles with depression during this time. Not only did he have to change the way he conditioned his body, he had to overhaul his mental approach to the game as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MOMt4KAGvw&t=266s

Eventually, Frye was cleared to return to basketball activities, He spent another season in Phoenix before signing with the Orlando Magic in the summer of 2014.

While Frye was well paid during his time in Orlando, it wasn’t the right situation for him. Orlando was a young rebuilding team, and Frye was heading into the final few seasons of his career. When he fell out of the Magic’s rotation for a stretch, the writing was on the wall. Luckily for Frye, several contenders were interested, and the Cavaliers outbid the Los Angeles Clippers to acquire Frye at the 2016 trade deadline.

When he joined the Cavaliers, Frye had an immediate impact both on and off the court. Timofey Mozgov had struggled for much of the season, and Sasha Kaun never really established himself in the NBA. Frye not only gave the Cavaliers another viable big man, his ability to space the floor made him an excellent fit in the team’s offense (LeBron James and shooters, a tried and true formula). Frye’s biggest contribution on the court undoubtedly came in Game Three of the Eastern Conference Semifinals against the Atlanta Hawks, when he went 10-of-13 from the field, including 7-of-9 from deep to finish with 27 points and help the Cavaliers take a 3-0 lead in the series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHTO8iRCfKw

Frye’s postgame press conference with LeBron James and Kyrie Irving was also memorable if only for the camraderie he shared with his teammates.

While Frye had a solid impact on the court, his greatest contributions to the Cavaliers’ championship may have been in the locker room. The Cavaliers were a notoriously drama-filled team, and when Frye arrived he found a surprisingly glum locker room for a team that was a championship contender. Frye is often credited for bringing the locker room together. He helped teammates appreciate the opportunity they had, helped lighten the atmosphere, and built bridges between teammates that hadn’t been there before.

While Frye didn’t have much of an on-court role against the Golden State Warriors in the Finals, his impact on the Cavaliers had already changed their season for the better, and he rightfully spent the entire summer celebrating with his teammates.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and a little over a year after that amazing night on Fathers’ Day of 2016 Irving was traded to the Boston Celtics, while  Frye’s close friend Richard Jefferson was sent to the Hawks to make room for Dwyane Wade. When Frye was sent to the Los Angels Lakers alongside Isaiah Thomas in exchange for Larry Nance Jr. and Jordan Clarkson, it was more than a last ditch effort to return to a fourth consecutive Finals. It was yet another sign that the greatest period in Cavaliers’ history—and the best run by a Cleveland sports team in over fifty years—was coming to an end.

It was somewhat fitting that I saw the news of Frye’s return to the Cavaliers while on a weekend vacation with some friends from college this summer. The nine of us had run cross country and track together in college, and make sure to put one weekend aside each summer to get together. You can learn a lot about someone when you run ten miles a day with them, and that’s what we did for four years. Even now, nearly 18 years after we graduated, we have a bond that’s rooted in hard work and sacrifice that can never be broken. We’re brutally honest with each other, constantly busting chops, and yet, underneath it all, we’re always there for each other. Above all else, that seems to be what Channing Frye has been for his teammates. He’s constantly goofing around and giving them grief, but when he’s ALWAYS there when his team needs him, both on and off the court. In a sport—and world—in which people too often take a “me first” attitude, higher praise cannot be given. It has been a pleasure to have him as Cavaliers, and an honor that he decided to finish his career here.

This @nets fan doesn’t deserve to be heckled by @Channing_Frye and @kevinlove . Need to find him pic.twitter.com/zTRoesQOYH

— Richard Jefferson (@Rjeff24) March 8, 2019