Coming into the Western Conference Finals, Channing Frye was the X-factor.  His ability to knock down outside jumpers was supposed to pull one of the Lakers’ big men outside, clearing the lane for the Suns’ pick and roll game.  However, in the first two games Frye hasn’t been able to put a pebble into the ocean going a total of 1-13 including 1-9 from the outside.  It has gotten so bad, he only logged 8 minutes in Game 2.  So what happened to Frye’s shot?

Missing Early

Now, I don’t know if the hot hand theory exists or not, but I can tell you for sure that Channing Frye is a guy who needs to see a shot go in the basket.  Channing Frye didn’t grow up a shooter (he had 392 3 point attempts this year, his second highest single year total is 33) and I don’t think he has that shooter’s mentality of “shoot until you make it,” where even though he is 0-10 he’s going to shoot the next one and know it is going in.  In game 1, Frye missed his first three shots, and in game 2 he didn’t make a single shot, I think that really hurt is confidence and got him thinking about every single jumper he was taking.

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