The Vig

John  Canzano, lifting a line from a John Carpenter movie, has a little note in his blog this morning about the progress of one Channing Frye.  You may remember Frye as the “who ‘dat?” portion of the deal that sent Z-Bo to the Knicks for Steve Francis’ salary.  Rest assured, Kevin Pritchard knew who he was when he brought him into town.

With the departure of Luke Schenscher (a guy who, by the way, may find a home in Minnesota with Garnett now gone), Frye is now my favorite Blazer.  Why?  Because he’s self-entertaining.

I deliver take-out a couple of nights a week and most weekends.  It’s a pretty sweet gig.  No stress.  Decent bucks.  So very Portland.  Anyway, a few weeks back now, I got to take food to Channing’s place.  He was new to town, and had just bought his new place.  How could I tell?  There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the entire place.  Actually, I take that back.  He had a small card table and a folding chair.  And he mentioned he had a bed in the back.  Besides that?  Empty.  Not even silverware.  Seems all his stuff was on a truck from NYC and wasn’t due in for a few days.

But there he was.  Home sweet home.  A man who needed nothing more than a table and a chair.  And a restaurant menu.

As we exchanged small talk, I mentioned how happy we fans were to have him in town and asked how he liked Portland.

“Oh man,” he said, “I love it.”

And he meant it.  I so badly wanted to say “just work hard for us and we’ll love you forever”, but I kept my mouth shut.  I just handed him his chopsticks (I was out of silverware and he said he knew how to use the sticks) and wished him well.

Channing Frye, folks.  My new favorite Blazer.