Orlando Magic: The Rebirth Of Channing Frye

After some rough periods in an Orlando Magic jersey, we may be seeing the best of Channing Frye on this team

Any NBA team with serious playoff credentials will tell how important roster depth and versatility is. It allows a team to withstand a couple of injuries, while also allowing lineup changes to deal with whatever opponents throw at them. For a young team like the Orlando Magic, such things would have been deemed a luxury as recently as last season.

With their core players improving, it looks like this team finally has some depth and versatility of its own.

At the forefront of this is Channing Frye. A stretch big known for being able to hit the three ball, his time with the Magic since moving from the Phoenix Suns two seasons ago has been inconsistent at best. Last year saw him fill many holes on this team, appearing in 75 games and starting 51.

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With young players like Aaron Gordon, Mario Hezonja and even Evan Fournier clamoring for minutes, it looked like he could be on his way out of the club at some point this season. Making roughly $8 million this year, he is the kind of pickup a contending team would be sure to look into as the trade deadline approached and they got ready for a playoff run.

So to see how he’s been used this season has been interesting to watch unfold. Even better, it appears as if Frye has now found his ideal spot on this team, and if we look at the numbers it seems to back that theory up. Frye has played in 11 of the Magic’s 16 games, starting in four of them. However, to begin the campaign he didn’t see any action in four of the team’s first five games.

The one game he did see floor time, just more than nine minutes in an eventual loss to the Chicago Bulls, he went 0-for-2 from the field, 0-for-2 from three-point range and 1-for-2 from the free-throw line to contribute one point and a plus/minus of minus-5.

The season was only beginning, but with so much young talent looking to make a mark on this team, the writing appeared to be on the wall for Frye. He’d surely be moved before long.

From there the choice to bring Frye back into the fold on a semi-regular basis was a subtle one, as head coach Scott Skiles looked for new ways to put this team in a position to win games. This has also included using Fournier in a number of ways on the court, as well as using Victor Oladipo from the bench.

It’s easy for Frye’s contributions to get lost among those more notable shake ups, yet he’s now contributing when called upon.

Consider this. As of right now, the Magic have the longest active win streak of any team outside the top eight in the Eastern Conference with two wins. Hardly a Golden State Warriors-like streak, but it goes to show how wide open the playoff race in the East will be this season. The Magic are now 8-8 as well and on the outside looking in at those top eight spots, but only just.

Has Frye been the catalyst that has led to this team going on a small run up the standings? Not entirely, but in those two recent wins to get the team to .500 (against the New York Knicks and Milwaukee Bucks) his contributions have been important.

He started both games, and when you consider he’d seen DNP’s and minimal minutes off the bench in the 12 games before this, making that adjustment would have been more difficult that you’d think.

Against the Bucks in particular Frye had his moments, going 3-for-5 from three-point range in just less than 19 minutes for nine points and a plus/minus of plus-15. Certainly an improvement on that game against the Bulls at the start of the month.

More than that, he seems to have now settled into his role, playing roughly 15 minutes a night (down from the 25 last season) and taking roughly two shots fewer than he would have last year.

The result? A more effective Frye who is shooting 45 percent from three-point range (39 percent last year) and 44 percent from the field as a whole (again up from the 39 percent posted last year). His effective field goal percentage has shot up to 59 percent as well, what would be a career high.

On top of that, his Player Efficiency Rating (PER) has jumped up to 16.1 (league average 15) after languishing in the low teens through the early stages of the year.

That number is fourth among all Magic players right now, ahead of the likes of Oladipo, Fournier and Elfrid Payton. Again it points to Frye becoming more effective in how he influences the game, but having more consistency in his minutes and how he’s used also helps him here. Skiles deserves credit for that.

Perhaps the only drawback going forward is how the re-emergence of Frye in this team hampers the growth of Aaron Gordon. It’s clear Gordon has a ton of potential and has already shown flashes, as well as being athletic and enthusiastic on both ends of the court. In fact, his PER of 17.1 is higher than Frye’s, as he does more of the dirty work on both ends of the court.

But the Magic have to change gears and move into win-now mode soon, and in fact it looks like it could be happening already. In his newly defined role Frye looks like he can help the team to do that. Gordon can too, but he’s clearly a player for the future, although he is full of potential.

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It’s a nice dilemma to have though, and as those contending teams will tell you, roster depth is critical. Through the rebirth of Channing Frye on this team, the Orlando Magic have found a little bit of that.