When Channing Frye entered the 2005 NBA draft as a rookie coming out of The University of Arizona, all he wanted to do was win.
After partying all night in New York City the night before the draft with fellow Arizona Wildcats Richard Jefferson, Luke Walton and Gilbert Arenas, Frye headed into draft day expecting to be picked by the Toronto Raptors.
“I was exhausted,” Frye told CP of KnicksFanTV. “It was so much Adrenaline. Two hours of sleep in two days.”
He wound up being drafted by the New York Knicks, the team his parents were fans of while living in Brooklyn, New York. Herb Williams was coach at the time and Isiah Thomas was running the basketball operations.
“I don’t care what business decisions [Isiah] made, I understand what he was trying to do with those teams,” Frye said. “It just didn’t pan out.”
Isiah Gets His Man
Larry Brown replaced Herb Williams as head coach of the New York Knicks just weeks after Frye was drafted. Brown was the head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers for six years prior to the Knicks job, including the 2000-01 team that made the NBA Finals and saw Allen Iverson win MVP of the league.
When coach Brown was brought up in conversation, though, Frye had to refill his glass. Memories of the dysfunctional 2005-06 Knicks team that went 23-59 began to trickle in.
“We had the most starting lineups in the history of the league,” Frye told CP of KnicksFanTV. “Forty starting lineups.”
He said there were games where the team didn’t even know who was starting 30 minutes before tip-off. “I have never – in the history of my 14, 15 year career, been a part of a team so dysfunctional,” Frye said of the 2005-06 Knicks.
Frye said there were nights coach Brown would encourage him and tell him to get ready to play – only to find that he wouldn’t log a single minute.
“Communication was awful. We didn’t have anything that was innately ours as a team. [Coach Brown] would start with plays one week, see other teams plays, and then adjust those plays to them.”
Jumping, Moving & Shaking
As a rookie on the Knicks, Frye quickly established himself as a threat from mid-range. He put up 30 points on Andrew Bogut 20 games into the season. Bogut was also a rookie, and was the first pick in the same draft that Frye fell to #8. Safe to say Frye had a chip on his shoulder that night.
“I had 30 that day on jumpers. I was jumping, I was moving, I was shaking,” Frye said.
The next practice after that game, coach Brown told Frye that he couldn’t shoot anymore jumpers. Everyone on the team told him not to listen. They were sure coach was just messing around.
“He was like no, if you shoot a jumper, you’re gonna sit on the side,” Frye said.
During practice they were even running plays that were specifically designed for Frye to shoot.
“David Lee is guarding me, he backs up five feet. I dribble and kick the ball out and [coach] was like ‘good job son.'”
As a 7-foot rookie quickly developing a jump shot, Frye’s confidence was devastated by coach Brown’s purposeful stonewalling of his game.
“When you get a rookie with a game that’s already moving fast…to have a coach absolutely T-bone that, I went into a spiral of when to shoot, when not to shoot…it was all over the place.”
“He had a way he wanted to coach, and yet, none of us were good enough for that way of coaching,” Frye said. “As a coach, I disagree with 99% of everything he said.”
‘Dark Cloud’
As a team that ended up 23-59 for the season, there were plenty of game films to study. Coach Brown would force the team to spend multiple hours watching the replays of their losses, spreading negativity across the organization.
“Nobody wants to see four hours of us losing,” Frye said. “[Coach Brown] was a gigantic dark cloud,” he added.
In his 14 year career, Frye has played for 10 different coaches. He’s seen all different styles of leadership. What upset him most about coach Brown is he never gave anyone on the team the opportunity to work together – where everyone has a specific role and knows it. Coach would even throw different players into the starting lineup depending on what city they were in.
“If you were from Phoenix, you could start that game,” Frye said with a look of confusion.
To be fair, Frye admits that he doesn’t know what the conversations were like between coach Brown and the Knicks front office at the time. And yet, coach Brown’s relationship with members of the 2005-06 Knicks squad that he coached shed light on an unfortunate reality about his lack of leadership.
“There’s not any player on the team that he coached that would vouch for him and say ‘he put us in a situation to win every single night,'” Frye said. “Which is against everything he did with A.I. [Allen Iverson] in Philadelphia. So I don’t know what happened.”
Check out CP’s full interview with Channing Frye below and stay tuned to KnicksFanTV.com for the latest Knicks news and rumors throughout the offseason.
