Ex-Cats Frye, Jefferson dish on media jobs, Lloyd, UA jerseys, more ahead of Red-Blue event

Not necessarily by the five-figure crowd taking in the 2001 Red-Blue Game before his freshman season. More so by the coach roaming the sidelines for what was officially no more than a glorified intrasquad scrimmage.

Lute Olson was taking notes, trying to figure out the players who would surround veterans Jason Gardner, Luke Walton and Ricky Anderson in his lineup after Richard Jefferson and Gilbert Arenas led a wave of talent out of Tucson following the Wildcats' 2001 Final Four appearance.

“I realized how serious and kind of nervous 'Coach O' was,” said Frye, who will be co-hosting Friday's Red-Blue Showcase with Jefferson. “He was like `This is not a joke. This is a regular game. And this is going to determine — other than Jason, Ricky and Luke — who's going to start.' We had five freshmen so we took that game very serious as far as I remember. It was pretty intense.”

Afterwards, Frye said, Olson settled on Isaiah Fox over him at center and Will Bynum at guard, sticking with that lineup through the early weeks of the season before Frye and Salim Stoudamire broke into the lineup.

“It just set the tone for that year,” Frye said. “Then finally our senior year (2004-05), coach was like `Do not get hurt. You're gonna run around and enjoy it but tomorrow starts the real stuff. So don't get hurt doing (anything) stupid.' It was a big, big change for the first year where he was like, `Go kill each other.'"

Over the years, the Red-Blue Game has taken on different forms, at first separate from a “McKale Madness” celebration that opened the practice season and then merging with it to form a preseason celebration intended to attract both fans and recruits alike.

Now, under third-year coach Tommy Lloyd, the game has been rebranded into the “Red Blue Showcase,” recognizing that personality-fueled introductions, dunk contests and other elements are as much as part of the show as the scrimmage.

But the Red Blue event always had one thing in common: It was a fun, almost bonding experience for players and fans alike.

During a media Zoom interview Wednesday, Frye and Jefferson discussed what the Red-Blue meant to them and several other items. Though Frye and Jefferson just missed playing with each other at Arizona, they have been nearly lifelong friends who also played together on the Cleveland Cavaliers in the later years of their NBA careers.

The two have been recording their thoughts about the NBA and other topics on the “Road Trippin' Podcast” with co-host Allie Clifton since 2017. On Wednesday, they dished things this way:

On why they decided to co-host the Red-Blue Showcase, along with Clifton:

Frye: “Murph (associate head coach Jack Murphy) and (director of player relations Jason) Gardner guilted us. No, no, no. I think it's hard for all our schedules to align. We've been wanting to come back and continue to support U of A and Tommy. The fact that there's gonna be a really big football game too, the fact that this team has pretty high hopes, it just all worked out. We're pretty hyped. And I know Allie Clifton has never seen a real college campus. So it's good that she probably sees one.”

Jefferson: “You want to lend whatever your talents are post your career. There's guys like (Cavaliers assistant) Luke Walton and (Magic assistant) Brett Brielmaier who might come back to help coach and work with the players. Channing and I entered into the entertainment space after our retirement. So when they give us an opportunity to host and connect to the crowd and the team, that's kind of what we do now. Also, I think it's an opportunity to show guys when they do retire there are great opportunities out there if you put some work in.”

On the energy of the Red Blue event:

Jefferson: “Let me take this one. My six- and eight-year old boys are going to go. I don't know if it's the first time but it's the first time that they'll fully get it. I am so excited because there is no other experience like this. When my kids get a chance to see that people go crazy over just an intrasquad scrimmage and it's sold out ... (they're) going to lose it because this is such a unique experience inside of the culture of basketball. To be a part of it is something that's special.”

Frye: “I think it just shows you how important U of A basketball is not only to Tucson but to Arizona. It's easy to go to an Arizona-Kansas game or Arizona-UCLA game when they're both ranked pretty high. But to pack it out and have the electricity and energy at a Red and Blue Game? When I went to go see Richard when I was a junior in high school, I was like, `Oh, this is the No. 1 team in the country. Of course they're gonna go pack it out.' But then my freshman year we are supposed to be last in the Pac-10.”

Jefferson: “You guys were supposed to be trash.”

Frye: “But we weren't, so (expletive) you. But (seeing the crowd then), you just realize that it's more than just basketball. It's the culture of Tucson so it gets you hyped. It gets me hyped talking about it.”

On UA's current throwback-style uniforms, which pay tribute to the 1988 Final Four and 1997 national champion teams:

Jefferson: “Honestly, the concern is that Gonzaga stole our design. Good color scheme, everything. So to bring it back to that '97 OG vibe … (it's) the reds, the OG blue ones that they won the championship game in and the original '88 uniforms with that Arizona logo with the cactus. That to me will always be Arizona basketball. Everything else is just an extension of those two images.

Frye: “If you don't get hyped for seeing those two jerseys, you didn't really get Arizona.”

Jefferson: “We fought to get the red uniforms. My sophomore year we were probably 0-2 in them. We rolled out to UCLA. It was an early game and we probably have 10,000 kids screaming `They've got their reds on, they've got their reds on,' because they knew that we hadn't won in our red uniforms. We lost that game and then Lute Olson told us, `You're never putting on those red uniforms again.”

Frye: “We put 'em on and we won, Richard. Don't worry. … The red uniforms are in my Hall of Fame, (among) my top three favorite jerseys of all time. There are certain shoes, there are certain jerseys, there are certain players, that are just forever ingrained into your brain.”

Jefferson: “Yeah, the first year I watched basketball in college was 1994. I was 14 years old. I was on spring break with nothing else to do because I was poor. So I watched the NCAA Tournament and that was the year that Arizona made it to the Final Four. I had no idea about Lute Olson, no idea about college basketball, no idea about nothing. I played in the park. I watched (the movie) White Men Can't Jump. That was the basketball I enjoyed. So to know that a school of that caliber was right down the street just engaged my interest in basketball. It's part of the reason why I still come back and support the university.”

On whether Frye might follow Jefferson's lead in some way after Jefferson pledged $3.5 million to UA and received naming rights for the Wildcats' practice gym:

Frye: “Maybe. I think it just depends. I'm not competing with Richard. Richard has that gym. I think I have a brick, which is perfectly fine.”

Jefferson: “You do not have a brick.”

Frye; “I have one brick. It's with the other bricks (UA offered inscribed bricks north of McKale Center in exchange for donations). You gotta check it out.”

On if anything about their UA careers helped them eventually carve out media careers:

Jefferson: “I would say this: Every group is different, the Lute Olson group of guys, the Sean Miller guys and coach Lloyd. Our group was a very social group. We were. And if you think about colleges, one group recruits the next group, which recruits the next group, which recruits the next group, so it's all kind of like minded guys.

“Channing and I are in the entertainment space. Sean Elliott does a ton of stuff. Gilbert Arenas — while I would not suggest digesting his content — yes, he's in the entertainment space. So when you look at that group, in that era, there's a lot of guys who have entered into coaching, entered into entertainment because that was what was going on in our locker rooms over those eras, especially the Lute Olson one. Collectively as a group, it was a lot of talking about basketball. So you see guys going into coaching or a lot of talking about basketball.”

Frye: “I think we were just taught basketball, not as individuals but as to see the game as it is. Each one of us had an individual job and had to understand the game and how to be good at it. What that did was it allowed us to see the game from a fan's perspective, but also as an NBA player's perspective. … So the way we talk about it is easy. Steve Kerr was doing TV before he was a coach, Sean Elliot's been doing TV for a long time. (Former Wildcat forward Tom Tolbert) has been doing radio for the Warriors for 30 years.”

“Then you look at Brielmaier or (Matt) Brase or Luke or all these other guys, Steve, Damon Stoudamire, Josh (Pastner), Jack (Murphy). Everyone just learns the game the right way. I think if we didn't have such a great time at U of A and really appreciated the opportunity, I don't think we'd be as committed to the game of basketball as we are.”

Jefferson: “Channing would be the world's tallest accountant if he didn't go to Arizona.”

Frye: “I have a math disability. So no, I would not. And I'm sticking by that.”

On UA's 2023-24 schedule, which includes six non-conference games against teams who could appear in the Top 25 at some point:

Jefferson: “Yes. Where you want it, whoever wants it, let's go. Lute Olson was like 'You guys want to play Kansas? You guys want to go to North Carolina? You guys want to go play Duke?' Yeah, let's go. Let's go play Illinois in the United Center. We're gonna go to Chicago and play there. Yeah. Damn right. Let's go. Sounds like fun, coach.”

Frye: I think a lot of people like being No. 1 all season. That's not what you go to Arizona for. You go to Arizona to have an opportunity to go the Elite Eight, the Final Four, to win a chip and I know we haven't been there for a while.”

Jefferson: “Since Richard's team (in 2000-01).”

Frye: “Actually, Elite Eight with my team (in 2002-03 and 2004-05) but that's all right. (Expletive) you, Richard… so to compete, to put those guys in that position, is better for them over the long run. It's better for the team to say, 'Oh, well we went to Kansas and played Kansas.' Now during a tournament if we got to play Texas in San Antonio, that's nothing. You're not even fazed by that. You're excited by that. It's great for TV and it's great for the tournament … because you've already been battle-tested.”

On whether their friendship grew when they played together in Cleveland:

Jefferson: “No. It was since high school. We went and watched him play in the state championship game after we recruited him.”

Frye: “I literally committed my junior year. I went on one trip. I saw Richard and Gil and Jay Gardner and Luke and was like, `Yo, I gotta come here.' (Then-assistant) Jay John said `Well, unless you commit now we're gonna go get Jamal Sampson or Tyson Chandler or those guys and I said, `No, no.' I went to the media the next day and said, `Hey, I'm going to Arizona' and then once I sort of signed those papers, coach O sent me the real workout sheet, which was like `Yo, get better quickly.' But it made me who I am. It was like putting the pressure on myself to live up to what was happening at U of A.

“And then having to deal with Richard consistently is just something that's like having a mole on your neck. You can't get rid of it. But now it's part of you.”

On the criticism some former UA players expressed about the hiring process that led to Lloyd's arrival in 2021:

Jefferson: “There was never criticism of Tommy Lloyd. I know his resume. I know where he came from. The criticism was (over that) the contract gets leaked the day they're interviewing Damon Stoudamire and Miles Simon. The criticism was those guys not feeling like they had a fair chance. (Like) how we come back to the school and uplift the younger generation, the school has an opportunity to lift up the next generation of coaches. Let's say like a guy like Brett Brielmaier gets a second interview, even if it's window dressing, that helps him on his next interview. Even if that means you have to extend the process another 10 days, that's fine. …

“We were excited (with Lloyd).The criticism was purely based off of how the process went, how the coaching search should have gone in my opinion. That would have benefited guys in our Arizona tree, even if they had zero chance of getting the job. That's the way you should do it.”

Frye: “Let's just say this: The people on that list are more than qualified to coach anywhere in Division I. Damon Stoudamire just went to the Eastern Conference Finals (as a Celtics assistant), and now he's coaching at Georgia Tech. Look at Jack Murphy. Brett Brielmaier has coached under Popovich. Look at their resumes.”

Jefferson: “We both won a championship with Brett Brielmaier (who was a Cavs assistant on their 2015-16 NBA championship team).”

Frye: “The fact that they still want us to come back to college, to this college, you have to give a good look to the rest of the players trying to build up to that. I know how much work all those guys have done. Give them a chance to be successful, especially if they're from your hometown.”

Jefferson: “They call it a fraternity and they call it a family. One of the parts of a fraternity is you make sure that you help your brothers. … for people that aren't familiar with coaching, getting an interview as a coach, there's a presentation that you have to make. And the more you practice that presentation, the better you get at it, the better chance you have of getting the job. That's why just even getting an interview is a big deal in those moments. So you always want to take care of your guys and give them interviews. Even if you feel like there's a 1% chance that they would get the job.”

On Lloyd's recruiting of international players and their ability to contribute:

Frye: “Ivan (Radenovic, a forward from Serbia) was my guy in college. The biggest thing is the cultural difference. When you get European players, you have to show them. They don't grow up loving Arizona. They're not from Arizona. They don't feel that college vibe. They've been pros for a long time and they act accordingly.

“I appreciate that he's going to get the best talent from across the world. The thing that I hope that happens is that they see and feel the love and camaraderie that we have. It's not just another team. You're part of the family. That's the biggest thing that needs to be portrayed to them. They can go play but when they feel like it's your family, you're gonna get the best version of them.”

Jefferson: “Look, I don't care where you're from. This is basketball. If you're from Mars, if you've got three arms, if we're on the basketball court wearing the same jersey, I'm indifferent about that.

“I think the true test of Tommy Lloyd is going to be the next two or three seasons. The success that he has had has been so amazing, and the support that the community and the alumni have shown him.

“But we know this: At Arizona, Elite Eights don't get it done. Pac 12 titles don't get it done. We have been searching for a Final Four for 20-plus years. We've got tons of Elite Eights. Sean Miller was the winningest coach in the Pac 12 over his tenure. We've had all this success. It's Arizona. As long as you don't mess it up, you should be able to get players here.

"So that's where the pressure starts. I'm excited to see the next few years. I think Tommy's gonna crush it and I think we're gonna get our first Final Four, I'm gonna say, in the next two or three years.”