Channing Frye opens up about his tough NBA journey, appreciating basketball and Cavs" Finals comeback in Players" Tribune essay
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Before this year’s run with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Channing Frye hadn’t been to the postseason since 2010 when he was a member of the high-scoring Phoenix Suns, a season that helped change his NBA career and began molding him into a champion.
“The big men on the team were myself, Robin Lopez, Amar’e Stoudemire and Lou Amundson,” Frye wrote in an essay for the Players’ Tribune. “One day, we were playing three-on-three, and Robin was guarding me and I had my two feet planted on the three-point line. Alvin (Gentry) started yelling, ‘Channing, what the hell are you doing? Take a step back.’ I was like, ‘I can shoot a three? For real?’
“He said, ‘You shoot a thousand of those. If you don’t shoot, I’m going to take you out of the game, so shoot it every time you touch it.’ That changed my whole mentality. From that day on, the entire floor opened up for me.”
Prior to that season, Frye was a little-used former first-round pick who had made just 20 3-pointers in his first four seasons.
But during the 2009-10 campaign in Phoenix, Frye made a career high 172 triples, connecting on 43.9 percent from beyond the arc. That growth, into a stretch-forward, eventually led to his much-anticipated playoff return when the Cavaliers made a midseason trade, taking him out of lottery-bound Orlando and targeting him as a missing piece to their championship puzzle.
“When I got traded to the Cavs in February, I knew it was going to be special,” Frye wrote. “I almost cried on the plane because I was getting the chance every player wants — a shot at the title. From the jump, I told myself that I was not gonna waste a day. I was not going to waste a moment. I was going to enjoy everything.”
Frye shined on the court during the playoffs, canning seven of nine triples during Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Atlanta Hawks.
“They liked to play a big lineup, and they put Paul Millsap on LeBron in the second unit,” Frye said. “Al Horford was on me, and he’s a center. It was Horford’s job to sag off the center some in order to help defend the lane from LeBron’s drives. That was just their defensive scheme. So I let it fly. The first one went in, and I said to myself, ‘It’s your time."”
He made positive contributions in the conference finals against Toronto as well, but what he did behind the scenes, proving to be a great fit in Cleveland’s locker room, helped bring the team together.
“We’re one of the closest teams I’ve ever been on,” Frye said. “We have text chains about all types of stuff. Everybody’s always talking s— to each other, except we don’t really say too much to LeBron. Sometimes I’ll say like, Bron, you weak. You only got 40? Then he’ll go out and try to drop 50.”
But as Frye states in his heartfelt essay, things weren’t always fun.
He was booed on draft night, had to overcome a scary heart condition where a doctor told him he would never be able play basketball again and had to stay positive during his daughter’s medical problems when she was just eight weeks old.
All of those experiences have given Frye a greater appreciation for basketball and everything that comes with it, including little things like brunch.
“The burritos that the Cavs provide are next level,” he said. “Every other place I’ve been, the preshootaround spread had been nonexistent. In Cleveland, they give us burritos, coffee, yogurt, parfait and some wonderful French toast. When I first saw the spread, I was like, ‘Free burritos before shootaround? This is the best!’ They’re not standard, O.K.? I’m talking a whole wheat tortilla, egg white, maybe a little goat cheese, maybe some cheddar. Sometimes they have pork sausage, sometimes chicken sausage. They switch it up to keep it fresh.
“This might sound crazy to you. But life moves so fast in the NBA, sometimes we players don’t appreciate the little things. Let’s enjoy this wonderful French toast. Made-to-order omelets. Let’s eat these breakfast burritos. Let’s get some wins and let’s make history. That’s exactly what we did. And I was a part of it.”
The Cavs rallied from 3-1 down in the NBA Finals, beating the record-setting Golden State Warriors and capping Frye’s at-times tumultuous journey from “hot garbage” high school basketball player to where he is now.
“Who the hell would have thought I’d ever be in the NBA Finals,” Frye wrote. “Who’d have thought I’d be playing against Atlanta in the second round, much less that I’d score 27 in a big Game 3? Or that I’d come off the bench to help us win the Toronto series, leading up to the Finals? And who’d have thought I’d be playing with LeBron — the best player (along with Kobe and Tim Duncan) of our generation?
“Who the hell would’ve thought Channing Frye would be an NBA champion?”
Click here to read Frye’s entire essay.
Channing Frye opens up about his tough NBA journey, appreciating basketball and Cavs" Finals comeback in Players" Tribune essay
Post a Comment