NBA fans have been losing their minds over the Kawhi Leonard contract investigation this past month. Ever since Pablo Torre reported that the Los Angeles Clippers could be circumventing the salary cap to pay the star forward, the league has gotten involved in investigating. Although, Channing Frye believes it’s been happening for a long time.
That’s why when Frye called Torre a “snitch” for making the report, his response went viral. Fans on Reddit especially criticized the former stretch big man for picking on the journalist for simply doing his job. In fact, his co-host, Richard Jefferson, said the same thing at the time it was said.
However, when Frye got around to addressing his comments in a recent episode of his podcast, he shrugged off the criticism.
“When you clip it like that and you have never seen an episode of Road Trippin’, you’d think I’m being f***ing serious, which is hilarious. And then, Pablo Torre, who has his own podcast, doesn’t take 10 minutes, not even 10 minutes, 30 seconds to see us laughing and joking about this,” Frye said on Road Trippin’.
All Jefferson could do as he watched his co-host rant was laugh and shake his head. He could tell that Frye had backed himself into a corner and was feeling attacked. Now, he needed to work his way out of it.
Later, Frye tried to act as though he didn’t care about the investigation.
“Is it a serious matter? For sure. But is it a serious matter to me? Absolutely f***ing not. I got 2 teenagers I gotta worry about,” Frye joked.
Despite this, he remained firm that stuff like this has been happening for a while.
“I don’t give a s**t that Kawhi got $28 million. Absolutely not. It’s been happening all the time. He just got caught… Stop taking yourself so seriously,” Frye added.
It’s hard not to believe in the former center. With the introduction of new cap rules, seemingly every CBA negotiation, teams have probably gotten creative to afford key players. But now, that creativity is starting to venture into being against the rules.
By the end of his monologue, Frye pleaded for the bots online to leave him alone.
“Also, the bots, leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you. The bots, stop it. Starting to talk about my career… Calm the f**k down. This is a great story. It’s interesting. There’s nothing else happening.”
Frye is probably right. It isn’t that serious to the point where things need to get personal. But at the same time, he should’ve known that his comments had the chance to upset certain people. And if he didn’t, now he does.
It’s all a bit of a misunderstanding at the end of the day. Frye acted like he wanted all of the smoke when addressing his “snitch” comments toward Torre. Yet, he also knows it’s a great story that needs to be reported on in the dead of the offseason. It seems like both the former NBA player and the journalist are on the same page; it just wasn’t delivered or received correctly.