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Suns Re-Sign Channing Frye

Posted: July 8, 2010

PHOENIX – The Phoenix Suns have re-signed center Channing Frye to a five-year contract, the club announced today.

“Channing’s ability to shoot and spread the floor was instrumental in our success last season, and it was very important for us to bring him back,” said Suns Head Coach Alvin Gentry. “But more than just what he adds on the court, Channing is a great teammate, a high-character individual, and a willing ambassador in our community. He embodies all the things we look for in a Phoenix Sun.”

Frye’s new contract keeps him in his hometown where last season he added lethal long-range shooting ability to his game and became one of the league’s most improved players.

The 27-year-old Frye averaged 11.2 points in his first season with the Suns in 2009-10, his highest scoring average since his rookie campaign in 2005-06 (12.3). The 6-11 center scored 20 or more points 11 times, establishing a new single-season career-high.

A five-year NBA veteran, Frye registered the largest increase in three-point field goals made from one season to the next in NBA history, racking up a team-leading and career-high 172 three-pointers, the fourth-most in the league in 2009-10, a season after making a total of 11 threes in 63 games in 2008-09 (minimum 50 games played).

Frye’s 172 threes were the most made by a center in NBA history, and he set the mark while developing into one of the league’s most efficient shooters, making a career-high 43.9 percent from three-point range, sixth-best in the NBA last season.

Originally selected with the eighth overall pick in the 2005 NBA Draft by New York, the University of Arizona product spent his first two career seasons with the Knicks before being acquired by the Portland Trail Blazers along with Steve Francis in exchange for Zach Randolph, Freddy Jones and Dan Dickau in 2007.

The Suns became Frye’s third NBA team when he signed as an unrestricted free agent on July 14, 2009.

A graduate of Phoenix St. Mary’s High School, Frye became the first boys’ basketball player in the school’s history to have his jersey retired in a ceremony last January. The Arizona Republic’s high school Player of the Year in 2001, that season Frye led his school to a 5A State Championship, a title won on the Suns’ home floor at US Airways Center.