Orlando Magic Player Evaluations: Channing Frye

Channing Frye became the Orlando Magic’s first big free agent signing under Rob Hennigan. Unfortunately his first year exposed many weaknesses in the plan.

Channing Frye will hold the title of Rob Hennigan’s first major free agent signing.

Hennigan’s tenure as general manager is not tied to Frye or anything. Frye is still ultimately a role player. But it was a pretty decent-sized statement as the team professed its desire to start winning more that he spent a significant chunk of change to bring in Channing Frye.

The initial season of his four-year deal turned out to be a disaster.

Nothing the Magic cannot recover from, but Frye’s failures and the miscalculations that came from management about Frye and how he would fit with the team was a constant and consistent storyline throughout the season.

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Frye had the reputation of being a knock-down shooter. The way Jeff Hornacek used Frye on pick and rolls with point guards Eric Bledsoe and Goran Dragic and the way Frye could knock down 3-pointers trailing the play in transition helped spread the floor and bring the Suns to the Playoffs’ door step last season.

Orlando did not have a lot of shooters. To put a marksman at stretch-4 with the team’s budding core and seeming defensive mentality (the Magic finished middle of the pack in defensive rating in 2014), could potentially help the team take the necessary step forward.

It logically made so much sense.

The whole plan collapsed pretty quickly though. Frye injured his knee in training camp and missed a good chunk of training camp, putting him behind both physically and in getting used to his teammates.

When he did get on the floor, Frye and Vucevic struggled to mesh defensively as both struggled rotating laterally and covering each other’s mistakes in the pick and roll. Jacque Vaughn‘s inconsistent defensive schemes left the Magic’s back line exposed as neither could play together.

The stats with Nikola Vucevic and Frye on the floor together were harrowing — 110.5 defensive rating — and the whole thing just did not work.

That does not mean things cannot work in the rest of Frye’s four-year deal. But it meant the 2015 season was made that much more difficult by this major miscalculation.

And as the newcomer and first big free agent of this rebuild, Frye takes the brunt of public criticism.

Next: The Good and The Bad