INDEPENDENCE: It’s been 11 years, and Channing Frye still jokingly carries a grudge.
He thinks back to the night that close friend and Cavaliers teammate Richard Jefferson and eight more buddies from the University of Arizona flew to New York to be with him for the 2005 NBA Draft. After Frye was selected eighth overall by the New York Knicks, they went out on the town.
Then playing for the New Jersey Nets, Jefferson said he’d been buying drinks for his guys for years. But the group included about 25 more, including Frye’s family and his “boys” from home. When it came time to pay the tab, which Jefferson guessed was between $5,000 and $7,000, Jefferson told Frye they needed his credit card.
“It was enough to make my stomach hurt,” Frye said, refusing to divulge the total.
The scenario repeated itself the next night.
“I thought it would be really, really funny to drain any bit of money he had in his bank account. But on the second night his credit card got refused,” Jefferson said. “He still holds it against us.”
Though Frye does, there is no malice in the memory. He said he “wouldn’t change it for the world.”
“He threw my draft party that I ended up paying for, but that’s all right,” Frye said. “If I had an older brother, he’d be my older brother.”
After a disappointing season and a half in Orlando, Frye was thrilled with a Feb. 18 trade that sent him to the Cavaliers to join Jefferson. According to Jefferson, so, too, was Frye’s pregnant wife, who got emotional on the phone, thankful that he knew someone on the team.
With the Cavs taking on the Toronto Raptors in the Eastern Conference finals, the two are valuable members of the second unit that has been deadly in the playoffs. Frye poured in a career playoff-high 27 points, including seven 3-pointers, in Game 3 of the conference semifinals against the Atlanta Hawks en route to a series sweep. Jefferson fell one point shy of a double-double in a Game 1 rout of the Toronto Raptors in the Eastern Conference finals.
Jefferson, 35, and Frye, who turned 33 Tuesday, have known each other since Frye was 14. Jefferson had just finished his senior year at Moon Valley High School in Phoenix, Frye his freshman year at St. Mary’s High School in the same city. Frye believes their brief interaction came at Jason Kidd’s basketball camp.
“He was taller than me already,” Jefferson said.
“Richard was the man in Phoenix for a little bit. He could dunk a whole bunch,” Frye remembered. “My dad asked him, ‘Can you teach my son what you’re working on?’ He was shooting [jumpers].”
After that, Jefferson followed Frye’s career. Jefferson preceded Frye at the University of Arizona and said members of coach Lute Olson’s staff consulted him during Frye’s recruitment.
“When you’re 6-foot-8 as a freshman, they’re focused on you playing basketball,” Jefferson said of Frye after practice Monday at the Cleveland Clinic Courts, exaggerating Frye’s height by about three inches. “Me, I kind of stumbled into basketball. He was a guy that people saw potential in at 11 years old.
“Channing got better every year to the point where the Arizona coaches were saying, ‘We really think this kid has potential. What do you think about him?’ I was thinking, ‘Oh, God, you’re going to bring this kid in here?’ ”
The “Oh, God” part came from Frye’s goofball personality. As quotable and flamboyant as Jefferson can be, he said he plays the straight man when joking with Frye.
“Oh, man. He is 10 times more serious right now than he was in high school and college,” Jefferson said. “He went to a private school; he was so sheltered. I’m not saying I went to this rough and tumble public school, but there was definitely more diversity at my school than at his.”
For Frye, a big day in their relationship came when Frye was a junior committed to Arizona and Jefferson and fellow Wildcats Gilbert Arenas, Luke Walton and Jason Gardner drove to watch Frye play in the state championship game. Jefferson said Mike Bibby had shown the same support for him during his recruitment.
“That was huge,” Frye said before Thursday’s game against the Raptors. “It showed me about my decision to go to Arizona and the people coach Olson had brought there. It showed the loyalty they had to each other to this day. It made me want to work harder. I finished high school and the next week I went to Tucson and started taking summer classes and working every day. I stayed every summer. My freshman year they were going to redshirt me so I could work out and I said, ‘No, no, no, I can play.’ ”
Frye and Jefferson were never college teammates. After the Wildcats lost the NCAA title game to No. 1 Duke in Jefferson’s junior year, he declared for the draft and was selected 13th overall by the Houston Rockets. But Jefferson’s close friends Walton and Gardner played with Frye for two seasons, so Jefferson went back frequently.
“The summer before his senior year I remember us hanging out every single day,” Jefferson said. “I was kind of relaxing and he wasn’t doing anything, either. I was like, ‘Dude, you still have to make it. You can’t sit on my couch.’
“He would sleep on my couch or go out with us at night. A bunch of us went to Vegas and we wouldn’t let him come and he was so bummed. We told him he had to finish college.”
The fun arrived when the Knicks drafted Frye. Jefferson still had three more seasons playing for the Nets and lived in Tribeca in lower Manhattan for a time. During his two years with the Knicks, Frye had his own place in suburban Westchester, but often crashed at Jefferson’s.
“I got to show him what it took me three or four years to figure out. He definitely got a quick learning lesson in the night life of New York City,” Jefferson said.
“He could take care of his business and be winning and still have that medium of ‘I’m enjoying the city but I’m also enjoying working out and playing hard and doing extra,’ ” Frye said. “Everybody has to find that medium and he found it early. If you can find it in New York, you can find it anywhere.”
Jefferson was not in Frye’s wedding, saying the groomsmen were members of Frye’s “motley crew” from his younger days. But Jefferson and Frye were vacationing together in Italy when Frye got the free-agent offer from the Magic, which Frye signed over Jefferson’s objections.
Now the two visit each other in the offseason, with Jefferson living in Hermosa Beach, Calif., and Frye in Portland, where he met his wife while playing for the Trail Blazers. Jefferson and Frye enjoy their verbal sparring, whether by text, phone call, on the bench or in the locker room.
“It’s funny because everybody gets to see our interaction together and they’re wondering if we’re still friends,” Jefferson said.
Frye confessed that they are so much alike that they both bought Ford F-150 Raptor trucks within a week of each other.
“I changed my color, mine’s a four-door, his is a two-door. Mine’s way better now, I’ve got it all hooked up,” Frye boasted.
Frye said they like doing the same things and dress the same, which extends to their choice of laceless sneakers.
“Is he wearing Vans today?” Frye said, looking over at Jefferson’s locker at the Q. “It’s weird. But it’s good, though.”
Frye put Jefferson No. 1 on his list of best friends in the league who are still active. When that is expanded to retired players, Frye said Jefferson is right behind Steve Nash and Grant Hill.
“He’s had a big influence on my life and my game,” Frye said of Jefferson. “He kind of keeps it real with me sometimes, probably too real. It’s good that he’s here.”
Jefferson cannot help but reflect on their long journey together.
“He’s one of my best friends, he has been for a very long time,” Jefferson said. “To be able to share this with him … we’ve still got a long ways to go.”
Marla Ridenour can be reached at mridenour@thebeaconjournal.com. Read her blog at www.ohio.com/marla. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MRidenourABJ.