Every Group Text Has A Channing Frye

Within this fun Jackie MacMullan story about NBA “glue guys” is an important truth: A law of group chat threads states that there will always be one person who will catch the most shit. The article focuses on Channing Frye’s role in improving the camaraderie among the Cleveland Cavaliers, and in this case, that one person is him.

Frye, who came to Cleveland in a trade during the 2015-16 season, has become the butt of everyone’s jokes, and that has apparently allowed Kevin Love to ingratiate himself with his teammates:

The BORED text chain continued to grow. Frye, whose corny jokes made him an easy target, managed to engage and unite the best players on his team by happily serving as their foil. No matter what subject he picked — a favorite song, a favorite car, a favorite breakfast pastry — his new teammates gleefully reveled in denigrating him for his choices.

Frye inundated the team with a stream of GIFs in the BORED text chain. The video clips ranged from a scene from “The Office” (“That’s what she said!”) to a cartoon of a skunk to footage of LeBron flopping.

The BORED chain became a place to vent after a bad game or to brag after a good one. If a Cavs player suffered an embarrassing miscue, there was a good chance it would pop up with sarcastic reassurances from teammates, such as, “Don’t worry. You don’t suck all the time!” Nobody was immune, but there was no doubt who wore the biggest bull’s-eye on his back.

“LeBron, me, RJ, we all started feeding off the texts and turned into a ‘bash Channing’ session,” Love says. “That was something we could all join in on.”

Now, look at your group chat threads: on your phone, through email, whatever. Can you figure out who’s the Channing Frye of your group? If you can’t find them ... it might be you.

H/t to Emma