Channing Frye detailed getting an costly introduction to NBA life when Richard Jefferson helped go away him with a $36,000 nightclub invoice earlier than Frye had even obtained his first skilled paycheck.
On the time, Frye was nonetheless unfamiliar with managing a bank card and didn’t initially perceive why Jefferson wished him handy one over.
Channing: “I don’t understand how playing cards work.”
Jefferson: “And I am going, ‘Channing, simply give me your card.”
Frye was advised that the cardboard was solely wanted to safe their desk, so he didn’t count on it to develop into chargeable for the group’s spending.
Channing: “I used to be like, ‘For what?’ They had been like, ‘Simply to carry the desk.’”
Jefferson knew Frye was coming into a very totally different monetary world as an NBA rookie.
With a number of of their Arizona mates round, he considered the scenario partly as a type of rookie initiation.
Jefferson: “I additionally know that I’m the safety blanket. I’m within the NBA. And so, all of our Arizona boys got here as a result of I had an condominium, everybody was staying in my crib. So I am going, ‘Channing give me your card. It’s simply to place it down. I’ll maintain it.’ They swipe it, they swipe it. He’s getting crushed. And that is type of like rookie hazing.”
The fees shortly collected because the group occupied seven tables. Frye stated his telephone started receiving alerts whereas he was nonetheless working financially like a school pupil and had but to gather an NBA verify.
Channing: “It was $36,000 {dollars}. Ten grand is for 2 tables. Now we have seven tables… My telephone is blowing up, ‘Who’s charging this.’ My shit continues to be faculty shit. I don’t even have an NBA verify but.”
Jefferson, nonetheless, stated he by no means supposed to power Frye to cowl limitless spending himself.
He deliberate to step in as soon as Frye’s obtainable credit score had been exhausted.
Jefferson: “This was my plan. As soon as we tapped out his bank card, I used to be gonna maintain the remaining.”
