Channing Frye

Channing Frye
PF/C, 6’11, 255lbs, 34 years old, 11 years of experience

Shot the three well, and grabbed some defensive rebounds, which was pretty much what he was asked to do. However, he fell out of the playoff rotation, which is not a great endorsement. His contract is OK if he is going to get played, but if it is not, it is a useful trade piece.

Player Plan: One year at $7,420,912 remaining. Considering he was not trusted enough to be put into the rotation, that contract ought be considered the foundation for a trade who someone that will be.

[...] Similarly, Phoenix's strong start should not mean a change in philosophy away from the youth movement. Should their very early success continue and they find themselves firmly in the playoff hunt, the to-do list should nonetheless read the same as it did before the season tipped off. If he was to be shopped before, Channing Frye should still be shopped, and P.J. Tucker should be prepared to be packaged with him if need be. It is not a slant on the performance or talent of either of the pair. Indeed, if anything, it's an endorsement. If it looks as though they can help Phoenix with a playoff push, then they can help any contending team with theirs too, thus helping their value on the market.

I've said it so many times that it's becoming kind of repetitive, yet it bears no less true - Phoenix really, really, really, really need rebounding help. Amongst their big men, the only average calibre rebounder is Robin Lopez, and even he's only been average for one season. He was a poor rebounder in both his rookie year and his college career. Other than him, Channing Frye is poor at it, Hakim Warrick is flat out bad at it, and Hedo Turkoglu is bloody awful. And yet that's all of the Suns main big man rotation right there. They're going to rebounding whether they know it yet or not, and this advantages Jones more than Siler.

As an addendum to the above, Phoenix used their MLE this summer to re-sign Frye to a 5 year, $30 million contract, after Frye opted out of the second year of his BAE-equivalent contract outlined above. This means that Phoenix have used some of their MLE on the same player for two consecutive seasons.

That has to be a first, surely.

The perennially tax-paying Suns need that money. Regardless of what happens with Amare Stoudemire, the Suns need to maintain their depth if they are to maintain competitive. To that end, free agents Channing Frye and Louis Amundson need to be brought back. With Ben Wallace's deadweight contract expiring, the Suns might just have the wiggle room to do this without being tax payers: however, they've surely had enough of fighting with that enemy over the years, no doubt still haunted by the memories of the assets it has cost them over the years. If they weren't paying $7.1 million for a third string guard who could readily be a fourth string guard, they'd have the money to retain their good players and maybe add more. Who knows; with an MLE to spend for a change, maybe they could even add Anthony Morrow. A bench unit of Dragic, Morrow, Amundson, Frye and Jared Dudley is a damn fine bench unit.