Back in 2016, Channing Frye and Richard Jefferson were both on the Cleveland Cavaliers team that won the franchise’s first championship. During that season, they both started the Road Trippin’ podcast with then Cavaliers sideline reporter Allie Clifton, and the two players have gone on to premier broadcasting jobs once their NBA careers ended.
Frye was a guest on the latest edition of the Sports Business Radio podcast and he explained that he was only going to be a guest on Jefferson’s podcast to help Jefferson get some broadcasting practice. Then, Frye all of a sudden had to jump into a different role
“Road Trippin’ was something we did during that championship year that was just supposed to be practice for Richard Jefferson. Richard called me in the hotel and said hey, I need to practice because I want to get into broadcasting when I’m done. Come up here and let me interview you. I’ve got Allie up here. I was like, I’m not coming up there unless you feed me and give me a bottle of wine.”
“We go up to the training room and there’s one mic. We are sitting there and getting ready to start…then Kyrie walks in…He comes and sits down. I turned into one of the hosts and that’s how it actually started.”
Frye mentioned that he loves to talk basketball and sports in general. However, when he is giving his analysis and criticisms on the game, he tries to keep it strictly to what he is seeing on the court only.
“I always want to do right by the player. I’m going to call it how I see it, but I’m trying my best at all times to never talk about the person, only the product that’s out there. I think sometimes a lot of broadcasters kind of melt into that area by talking about the player instead of the product that the player put out there. I think we have to keep those things separate especially in today’s age because guys are very sensitive to that because of how much that is happening to them on social media or other broadcasts.”
When Frye is hosting his show Handles on social media, his goal is to show clips of every game, even for the ones where two bad teams might be playing.
“For my show Handles on Fridays, I have 4-5 games going on TVs and I am sitting there with 2-3 other people and we are choosing the games and the clips to pull. I think regardless of your record, each team deserves to get looked at. If you remember old school ESPN would play a clip of every single game that was on. I think we need to get back to that…Those players are all pros. They get paid. They deserved to get shown especially if they have good highlights or especially if they are playing well. Sometimes, your team stinks, but you are good.”
