Why the Cavs shouldn’t trade Channing Frye

The Cleveland Cavaliers should reconsider the idea of trading forward-center Channing Frye.

Over the course of the offseason, there are always going to be those players who fans, media and front office executives life consider expendable. Of those players for the Cleveland Cavaliers, one is Channing Frye, an elite shooting big man who has been an integral part of the team’s success on and off-the-court since his arrival.

Now, make no mistake about it. With the Cleveland Cavaliers having 19 players on their training camp roster and only 15 players allowed to be full-time players for the Cavs, there will need to be moves the Cavs make to cut their roster down to the maximum limit. Of these moves, cutting Kay Felder, Edy Tavares and/or Ante Zizic would seem to be the most reasonable moves. However, there would still need to be one more move the Cavs made if they wanted to sign center Kendrick Perkins to a regular season contract.

Frye isn’t the player that the Cavs should move though.

Why? Because outside of Kevin Love, Frye is the Cleveland Cavaliers only frontcourt player capable of making his long-range shots look easy.

In fact, while Love has a career three-point average of 36.4 percent, Frye’s is a tick higher at 38.9 percent. Even last season, as Love had the second-highest three-point percentage of his career (37.3), Frye’s was higher (40.9). Ironically, Frye had the second-highest three-point percentage of his carer last season as well.

Both Love and Frye are lightning-quick snipers who don’t hesitate to launch the ball from deep, especially after receiving a pass from LeBron James. According to NBA.com, Frye shot 46.9 percent from three when receiving a pass from the King (2.0 three-point attempts per game) and Love shot 42.5 percent from three when receiving a pass from James (2.3 three-point attempts per game).

As a result, whether Love is on the bench for three minutes or out for three months, Frye is the one of the only bigs the Cavs have that can replace what he brings in terms of spacing and shot-making. Jae Crowder (career three-point percentage of 34.6) nor Jeff Green (career three-point percentage of 33.3) can be trusted as volume three-point shooters at this point.

Richard Jefferson, who has made 37.7 percent of his threes in his career can certainly knock down a three. However, after shooting 33.3 percent from three last season, he’s coming off his worst season from three-point range since the 2011-2012 season.

Last season, Love missed 22 games and 14 consecutive games after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery in February. In that time, Frye would start in eight games though only six starts came while Love was out for a substantial period of time.

All in all, Frye would start 15 games. In those 15 games, Frye knocked in at least three trey-balls in seven games and made at least 40.0 percent of his three-point attempts in six of those contests. As a starter, Frye averaged 11.4 points and rebounds per game while shooting 44.9 percent from the field and 34.8 percent from three-point range.

That’s the type of production the Cleveland Cavaliers need in order to run their offense as seamlessly as possible.

Frye’s three-point percentage as a starter paled in comparison to his career numbers, which wasn’t ideal. However, it’s important to note Frye’s career numbers because with such a significant difference in the shooting percentages, it’s more likely that Frye would shoot forty percent from three-point range in a game than thirty-five percent.

Shooting thirty-five percent from the field would make Frye an average performer from three, while shooting forty percent from three-point range is the marksmanship you expect from a player with Frye’s shooting prowess.

At 6-foot-11 and 255 pounds, it would nice to see Frye be a bit more assertive of the boards but he’s lean, lanky and not necessarily built for banging with big men down-low. In 74 games, Frye only gathered 10+ rebounds twice. Of course, Frye was a backup for the vast majority of the season so it stands to reason that those numbers are negatively skewed. However, as the Cavs realized when they started Frye in Love’s place, rebounding is the sole area where Frye is nothing like Love (who averaged 11.5 rebounds per game for his career).

Nonetheless, Frye’s feel for the game is similar to Love’s. That’s whether Frye is operating as a passer or a cutter, as he consistently makes timely reads in the halfcourt due to his high basketball IQ (which itself is enhanced by 11 years of NBA experience).

There’s another problem with trading Frye – his chemistry with LeBron James, Kevin Love and Richard Jefferson, players who have been core pieces for at least the last two seasons. In fact, just as Frye embraced Isaiah Thomas after the latter was traded to Cleveland, he’s one of the players that helps facilitate a familial bond amongst members of the group. Even with Love.

Though player-turned-executive James Jones has been credited with bridging the gap between James and Love early on in their pairing, Jones is a stoic and sagacious presence in the locker room while Frye provides the necessary comic relief. He’s the jokester, a guy who gets joked about and breaks the ice and tension with his temperament.

This isn’t to say Frye shouldn’t be traded because he hosts the Road Trippin’ Podcast with Jefferson and Fox Sports Ohio’s Allie Clifton and is a friendly guy. It’s to say that over the course of a long, grueling and, at times, boring regular season, a player with Frye’s persona and his ability to enhance the team bond is invaluable.

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Together, Frye’s ability to step in for Love (whose role is even more important this season after Kyrie Irving’s departure) and his locker room presence make him a priceless commodity for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

While keeping Frye would mean a player like Iman Shumpert has to be traded instead, it’s a better move for the Cavs due to the bevy of three-and-D wings they have at their disposal. Outside of Love, Frye is the only big man the Cavs have that can knock down consistently knock down threes and man either the power forward or center position.

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*Unless otherwise referenced, all stats gathered from www.basketball-reference.com