The New York Knicks are riding high entering the NBA Finals’ Game 1 at the San Antonio Spurs on June 3. That contrasts with ex-Arizona Wildcats standout Channing Frye’s experience as a Knicks rookie 20 years ago, when New York won a meager 23 games during the 2005-06 season.
During Netflix’s “Ryen Russillo Show” episode featuring Frye, released June 1, the Phoenix native cited “the problem was Larry Brown” for one of the Knicks’ worst seasons in franchise history. The Valley native ripped the Hall of Fame coach for nearly three minutes about several “crazy” backstories of Brown’s futile Knicks stint that got him fired after just one season.
Frye said Brown’s tactics caused Knicks players to “call the NBA on him twice.”
He blamed Brown for creating an acrimonious relationship with then-Knicks star Stephon Marbury, odd team practice structures, lazily using other teams’ plays as their own, and not building chemistry with their player rotations, including 42 different starting lineups, per Basketball Reference.
“We had the most starting lineups. Look that up,” Fyre said. “Larry, at some point during the season, was getting guys from the G League weekly. So we didn’t know who was our teammates. Dude, I promise to God, we didn’t know who was starting the basketball game until 40 minutes, when he would write it on the board.”
“The problem was Larry Brown… we had to call the NBA on him twice.”@channingfrye has some absolutely wild stories from his time with the Knicks 😳
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Brown went down in flames
After Brown led the Detroit Pistons to the 2004 title over the Kobe-Shaq Lakers, Brown and the Pistons’ front office mutually parted ways the next year. Brown signed with New York on a five-year deal worth between $50-60 million, which made him the league’s highest-paid coach.
Frye described how his former Knicks teammate and current Houston Rockets coach Ime Udoka vouched for Frye to replace him in the opening lineup. That was after Brown revealed his New York bias.
“I played 14 years, I have never and probably will never see this again,” Frye said about Brown. “He would say, ‘If you’re from this city, you can start, or if you went to college here.’ So we’d get a dude off the airplane … Ime Udoka, ask him! He was on our team.
“Ime came off, he was like, ‘Dude, you’re great, son. Here, go start.’ You’re like, ‘Start?’”
Marbury’s ‘clash’ with Brown on Knicks after Suns trade
Marbury was one of the league’s top point guards when he was dealt from Phoenix to his hometown team New York in 2004, then played there for the next five years.
Marbury, who’s now a fixture at Madison Square Garden supporting the current Knicks team, had a longtime sour relationship with the team after he left New York. Frye said Marbury “came to a clash” with Brown during film sessions and practices during their first month together, despite Marbury’s solid individual production.
Frye closed his diatribe about Brown when he said that former Knicks veteran forward Malik Rose advised him, “Channing, this is not what the NBA is like. This is a circus.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Ex-Suns big Frye rips ‘crazy’ Larry Brown stint coaching Knicks