Channing Frye Strengthens Cavs Weaknesses

Channing Frye is now officially a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers after a pair of separate trades and Frye’s skill-set will be able to improve multiple areas of weakness for the Cavs.

As you have probably heard by now, the Cavs couldn’t pry Ryan Anderson away from the New Orleans Pelicans, nor did they trade Kevin Love at the trade deadline. Instead, the Cavaliers were able to acquire the services of Frye from the Orlando Magic, in a deal that makes Cleveland a better basketball team, period.

In case you missed it, the Cavs had to part ways with fan-favorite and 12-year Cavalier veteran Anderson Varejao in the deal. Jared broke down Varejao’s best moments here and GM David Griffin called the trade an “incredibly difficult one to do, both on a human level and in a real sense. It was a very difficult phone call to have,” per cavs.com.

Along with Varejao, the Cavs dealt their 2018 first round draft pick to Portland but it is top-10 protected, meaning it will be conveyed back to Cleveland if it falls inside the top-10. This is some insurance for the Cavaliers in the unlikely occurrence of a meltdown over the next couple of years.

Griffin had high praise for Frye, a player he has coveted since their days working together in Phoenix, as he stated that the former Arizona Wildcat “furthers the cause” in the chase to bring a championship to Cleveland, via Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group. Griffin also revealed some interesting details in his press conference, which confirms his love of Frye, as Dave McMenamin of ESPN explained in a tweet.

Okay, now that the necessities are out of the way, let’s indulge in Frye’s analytical value and fit with the Cavs.

Frye isn’t going to be a savior for the Cavaliers. He isn’t making them a better team than the Golden State Warriors immediately. What he does do though is eliminate some weaknesses Cleveland has and provides the team with a reliable veteran, that doesn’t do anything outside of his limits or role.

The Cavs bench has had its fair share of struggles this season and one of them has been the lack of spacing, especially from the bigs. Timofey Mozgov and Tristan Thompson have both had stints coming off the bench and neither of them are going to stretch the defense at all. Varejao’s elbow jumper didn’t command the same attention as it did a couple of seasons ago and Sasha Kaun isn’t doing anything to trouble anyone.

This is one of the main reasons Kevin Love has been used as a glorified stretch four with his time with the Cavs. LeBron James and Kyrie Irving are both brilliant at driving to the rim. Without the surrounding outside shooters though, the defense has the luxury to collapse on those drives. This is why Love stands on the perimeter so often when he plays with the starters and it is also why Tyronn Lue has made a sustained effort to get Love in with the bench unit. Playing without James and Irving allows the offense to run through Love and it gives him the leisure to receive the ball at the elbow and in the post.

Although, if Lue chooses to pair Love and Frye together with Irving, James and Iman Shumpert/J.R. Smith, it provides the Cavs with a stretch big not named Kevin. Subsequently, this will allow Love to go into the post more often with the starters, as Frye will take his role as the stretch four. Of course, you still have James and Irving, so Love will still get more touches with the bench unit, so it should still be a focus of Lue and the coaching staff to get him in there with them more often.

This trade should allow Love to do more than just stand in the corner when playing with the starters though, as Frye can happily walk into that role. Or, Lue could always decide to have both Frye and Love space out, which would give James and Irving open areas to work with when attacking the basket. The possibilities are endless and all of them are positives for Cleveland.

As a floor spacer, majority of Frye’s shots would come in catch and shoot scenarios, which is an area of his game that borders elite levels. The 7-footer is hitting 40.7% of his catch and shoot three-point attempts this season, a number that should bring smiles to Cavalier fans’ faces. Cleveland will be able to put Frye on the court in clutch moments and have enough faith in him that he will hit a key shot if they need him to.

Playing with the likes of the Big Three, Frye should be the beneficiary of a bunch of wide-open looks from downtown and quite frankly, the shots need to be wide-open for Frye to be effective. On shots where a defender is at least six feet away (which NBA.com/stats constitutes as a wide-open look), Frye is hitting an astronomical 51.7% of his three-point attempts. When a defender is within four-six feet though, that number falls off a cliff to 28.6% and when the defender is an extra two feet closer, Frye’s percentage declines again to 26.3%.

Frye’s importance to this team will lie in his ability to hit the open three when he needs to. While a large proportion of his threes should be wide-open looks, Frye will need to see an upswing in his percentages when defenders are closing out hard on his jumpers. Despite this, the floor spacing Frye will provide may be able to mask some of his lower connection rates from beyond the arc.

When taking a peek at Frye’s per game basics- 5.2 points and 3.2 rebounds- nothing jumps off the page. Those numbers would be better suited to a bench warmer, rather than a player who is expecting to play a vital role in the Cavaliers pursuit for a championship.

Just focusing on these numbers would be foolish though, as they don’t tell the full story of Frye’s importance to the Magic this season. When he was on the court, Orlando scored 104.8 points per 100 possessions, a number that decreased to 99.4 when Frye went to the bench. Frye was also a plus on the defensive end, as the Magic possessed a better defensive rating by 1.3 points with him on the court compared to the contrary. This gives Orlando a total net rating of +2.6 with Frye on the court, which is the only positive net rating of any Magic player who has played at least 200 minutes this season.

While Orlando is a better defensive team by a small margin analytically with Frye on the court and opponents actually shoot just marginally a better percentage (+0.8% to be exact) when being guarded by Frye, he passes the eye test on the defensive end.

Griffin and Lue harped on the fact that Frye, at 7-foot, uses his long wingspan to be a disturbance on the defensive end and he is an intelligent team defender with a strong understanding of team concepts on that end of the floor. This accredits Frye to not be a negative on the defensive end, which of course is a positive for Cleveland.

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Frye also ranks highly among power forwards in real plus-minus categories. Overall, Frye is eighth with a RPM of 3.15, which is a higher rating than Anthony Davis. In terms of defensive plus-minus, Frye is 11^th and he sits 12^th on the leaderboard for offensive plus-minus.

Some people take a lot out of these numbers, while others disregard them. The Cavaliers front office is one of the most analytically savvy in the league though, so it is a safe assumption they had an impact in the decision to acquire Frye, as they should. No matter what your thoughts on analytic stats are, there is no denying these numbers are consistent and impressive enough to solidify the idea of Frye being an upgrade for this roster.

Frye makes this Cavaliers team a better unit. His skill-set and fit with the roster will provides the Cavs with a boost off their bench and Frye should see some meaningful minutes come playoff time. Everything is in place for Frye to make a positive impact in Cleveland, now it is up to him to go out and perform.