It’s weird to me that Channing Frye didn’t average significantly less PPG this season than during his “prime” in Phoenix. For some reason I have this memory of “Phoenix Frye Man” scoring 15 per game and canning hella threes set up by Steve Nash. Nope! He peaked at 12; this year, he averaged 9. In fact, his per 36 scoring is his highest since his rookie year, and now I’m getting really freaked out because he looked pretty done when he was in Orlando. I guess that thing they call “The LeBron Effect” is a real thing that really happens, because there is no other reason for how Frye resuscitated his career.
Tonight, he scored 18 points in only 17 minutes. I have been wondering why Jonas Valanciunas hasn’t gotten to play more; I think I just found out my reason. Except, now that I think about it, Frye was getting kind of abused by Valanciunas. Plan for game three: just have Valanciunas and Frye go at each other for the whole game and watch as a new record for combined points scored is achieved.