Built to Lose - Delete Scenes - III
The heartfelt bond between Channing Frye and Markieff Morris, Robert Covington and the historic RGV Vipers, and Willie Cauley-Stein's self awareness.
Welcome, folks. My name is Jake Fischer. I’m a former Sports Illustrated NBA reporter and current Bleacher Report contributor. If you’re here, you probably know my first book, ‘Built to Lose: How the NBA’s Tanking Era Changed the League Forever’, will be out May 4. It covers Hinkie’s Sixers, the post-Big Three Celtics, old Kobe’s Lakers, some crazy Kings drama, plus so much more. And if you subscribe to this newsletter, you’ll receive a 30% off discount code for pre-ordering a copy.
Like I mentioned in the first and second installments, there’s a good bit of new information I learned reporting this book that didn’t fit between its two covers. Below is the third post of this bi-weekly newsletter you’re presently reading, where I’m sharing some of the scenes and anecdotes that didn’t make the final cut.
I.
Channing Frye was the supporting character in last week’s series of LeBron anecdotes. He’s one of the many marksmen whose personality has bolstered contenders as much as his outside shooting—and they typically make for exceptional quotes.
Frye joined Mike D’Antoni’s vaunted Seven Seconds or Less Suns in 2009, just in time to help Phoenix finally vanquish San Antonio in the 2010 postseason, avenging all those heartbreaking defeats to the Spurs in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2008. An emotional celebration rightfully erupted in those 2010 Suns’ postgame locker room. “That was probably the only time I had ever seen Steve Nash cry,” Frye says.
By the 2011-12 season, Frye had emerged as a Suns staple, a starting stretch-four who’d drain triples off pick-and-pops with Nash and helped maintain Phoenix’s camaraderie.
Consider the third game of that campaign, when Frye checked out with 5:32 remaining in the first quarter for Suns rookie forward Markieff Morris. Only Frye’s break on the bench lasted all of 72 seconds. Morris committed two quick shooting fouls and a turnover. And in between that second pair of free throw attempts, Phoenix immediately sent Frye back into action, with the Kansas product never returning to that evening’s affair.
So Frye sought out a dejected Morris in their postgame locker room. “This is game three out of probably 1,000 games you’re going to play,” he preached. “Shit happens every day. You just can’t dwell on it because there’s always a next game.” But what makes this a particular story of note: Morris would actually return the motivational favor three years later, as the supposed-to-be-tanking Suns chased the 2014 playoffs—during the first Suns season covered in 'Built to Lose.’
While Frye had drained over 42% from distance through the first three months of that 2013-14 season, he converted only 32.9% in February, and just 17.8% on 28 attempts during the team’s four-game losing streak that month. “I had hit a wall,” Frye says. “Like, a big wall.”
One evening, he received a phone call from none other than Morris. The Suns’ head coach Jeff Hornacek was planning to insert Morris into Phoenix’s starting lineup, instead of Frye. “But I would rather play with my brother [his twin, Marcus] than have you coming off the bench,” Morris explained. “I think that’s what’s best for us. We all believe in you. Push through this. If you need me to come to the gym and shoot with you, or if you need me to do anything, just let me know. But I told coach to keep you starting.”
His encouragement meant everything. See, Frye had missed all of the previous 2012-13 campaign having developed an enlarged heart. He was diagnosed only during a routine physical, perhaps saving his life, and there was suddenly a real fear he’d never play an NBA game again. Doctors even forbade Frye from any physical activity of greater intensity than yoga and golf. He went on to shuttle six times from his offseason home in Portland to a Baltimore facility for medical evaluations. Each occasion brought its own slate of stress testing, monitoring his heart’s reaction to bodyweight exercises like squats, lunges and sit ups. “Workouts that would usually take a person 30 minutes were taking me two hours,” Frye says.
Numerous doctors eventually cleared his return for the 2013-14 year, yet that January presented the veteran with his own version of a rookie wall, when his shooting slump began and Hornacek mulled swapping Morris into the starting unit instead. Frye’s lungs kept burning, his legs feeling ever heavy. So after Phoenix’s game in New York on Jan. 13, he drove down to Baltimore rather than flying the team charter back to Arizona, desperate to confirm his depleting stamina was merely fatigue and not a larger concern. “I was doing everything possible. Double ice baths, taking stuff, getting IVs,” Frye says. “Anything so that I would play every game.”
Sure enough, when Frye retired in 2019, that 2013-14 campaign was the only season of his entire 13-year career he played in all 82. Phoenix would notably fall short of their surprising postseason goal, but Frye certainly accomplished his.
II.
By the end of that 2013-14 season, 33% of the association’s players had spent time in the NBA Development League (it wouldn’t become the G League until 2017-18). Part of that success stemmed from the minor league’s open concept, where players sign a contract with the league itself—not their team—allowing any NBA franchise to scoop any D-League player at any time. Being one call and domestic flight away from the NBA dream was enough for players to swallow the D-League’s minuscule salaries, which paid most players less than $30,000 for the year.
The D-League also featured a handful of affiliate players, guys who were under contract with an NBA club, but played for that franchise’s D-League organization for various reasoning—lack of minutes at the top level, an injury rehabilitation plan, etc.
That is how Robert Covington found his way onto the Rio Grande Valley Vipers for much of the 2013-14 campaign.
Back on draft night that June, the Houston Rockets offered Covington a two-year deal with over $500,000 guaranteed in that first season. It was by far the most lucrative NBA option the Tennessee State product was weighing that evening. Sam Hinkie’s Philadelphia 76ers first pitched selecting Covington in the second round, but only if he would agree to spend a season playing overseas, more colloquially know as being “drafted and stashed.” Several other teams offered the same scenario, but Covington’s representation rebuffed each one. They took the Rockets’ deal instead, joining forces with Hinkie’s former boss Daryl Morey, even though Houston had little minutes to spare on a rookie project like Covington, who was transitioning from a college forward into an NBA wing.
And so the Rockets chose to develop their prospect in the D-League, where Houston had assembled a murderer’s row of long-range snipers. In addition to Covington, RGV rostered several players who were ready for NBA call-ups that season, including Isaiah Canaan (another Rockets affiliate player), Troy Daniels, Chris Johnson, James Johnson and Darius Morris. “We thought we could beat a couple NBA teams,” Daniels says.
The Vipers also functioned as Houston’s mad-science testing lab. They pushed the limits on the confines of modern basketball, running and gunning at a dizzying pace and regularly firing over 50 triples in a single contest—double the three-point attempts in which the Rockets, at 26.6 per game, led the entire NBA that same year. About 90% of the Vipers’ shots came either behind the arc or around the rim. “They said we couldn’t shoot any twos,” Daniels says. “Only threes and layups. At one point I took 18 threes.”
Covington himself launched 8.6 attempts each game. Knowledge of his quick trigger forced opponents to guard him far beyond the three-point arc. “He could be 30 feet out, he shoots it the exact same way,” says Nevada Smith, the Vipers’ head coach. “And a hand in his face did not bother him.” That attention thinned defenses for Canaan’s dances to the rim. RGV’s five-man unit of Canaan, Covington, Daniels and both Johnsons obliterated opponents. “The best lineup to ever step foot on the floor from an offensive efficiency standpoint in D-League history,” Nevada Smith says. “They were unguardable.”
Covington and the Vipers torched all comers during the D-League showcase that January, with Hinkie shaking his head from the stands all the while. Here was the prototypical pupil for a patient rebuild, growing and developing with a rival franchise, and the very team Hinkie had left to assume leadership of the Sixers’ front office.
Most NBA fans know how this story ends. By the beginning of the 2014-15 season, Philadelphia finally juiced enough front-loaded money into Hinkie’s patented four-year, non-guaranteed deal to land Covington with the Sixers. And the rest, as they say, was history, but not before those Vipers scribbled their names all over the D-League record books.
III.
As those Vipers torched the NBA’s minor league, John Calipari’s loaded Kentucky team blitzed the 2014 NCAA Tournament that spring. Those Wildcats featured seven future NBA players and three eventual first-round picks.
A lanky 7-footer sophomore named Willie Cauley-Stein stalked the back-line of Kentucky’s defense. His rare combination of size, speed and agility flashed the incredible potential, some NBA scouts believed, to guard all five positions at the next level. He could challenge opposing brutes at the rim and move his feet quick enough to clamp speedy ball handlers.
The year before, some NBA evaluators who visited Lexington to evaluate Kentucky’s other freshman center, Nerlens Noel, even believed it was Cauley-Stein who had the higher ceiling than the presumptive No. 1 pick in that 2013 draft. By the following March, there was little doubt Cauley-Stein would hear his name called in the first 10 picks. “His stock had soared pretty high,” says Tod Lanter, a walk-on forward for those Wildcats.
But Cauley-Stein tweaked his right ankle in Kentucky’s first NCAA tournament game against Kansas State. He played through the pain in their second-round victory, only to then aggravate the injury yet again in the Sweet 16. He would watch his starry teammates reach the national championship game from the sidelines, heartbroken, his right foot strapped inside a walking boot, and his No. 15 jersey pulled over his street clothes.
The basketball calendar doesn’t wait for anyone. As June approached and the 2014 draft neared, Cauley-Stein was openly uncertain, grappling with whether to turn professional or remain at Kentucky for one more season and one more shot at capturing a title. “Willie had to choose,” Lanter says.
Of late, that decision has become particularly easy for most prospects. When a first round pick hears his name called, he’s instantly guaranteed a three-year contract worth a life-changing fortune. But those promised riches can often attract a slew of shady supporters, a former youth coach looking for his own payday, an estranged uncle offering counsel for his share of those guaranteed millions. “You gotta make sure that you’re mature enough to surround yourself with the right people to help you make the right decisions,” Lanter says, “because you’re never gonna be capable of doing that on your own. You gotta have people to help manage it.”
One afternoon, as Cauley-Stein’s two options rattled around his brain, he and Lanter wheeled into a fast-food drive-thru. They ordered and circled up towards the window, and the gigantic 20-year-old turned to his friend as humbled and confused as one could be while waiting for a combo meal. “Man, I don’t know if I’m ready,” he admitted. “I don’t trust myself with that kind of money yet.”
Cauley-Stein ultimately went back to school. And when the Sacramento Kings selected him No. 6 overall one year later, he was wearing a customized, gold medallion worth thousands of dollars on draft night, his three initials interlocking in a gaudy circular logo.
‘Built to Lose: How the NBA’s Tanking Era Changed the League Forever,” arrives on May 4.
You can subscribe to this newsletter and receive a 30% off discount code.