(Photo. Jonathan Mannion)

There’s some good stuff in Peter Vecsey’s NY Post column this morning. First, he details how the Kobe / Phil standoff went down after Mamba supposedly begged out of practice on Tuesday to “rest his legs” for the third consecutive day. Vecsey reports that this was Phil’s response to Kobe:

“I don’t want you riding the exercise bike in front of the team,” Jackson hipped Bryant, according to a source. “There’s nothing wrong with your legs. I need you to be part of the team. I need to come to practice and work hard. And I need you to come to games and play defense.”

Vecsey goes on to say that had Kobe not fallen in line, he thinks Phil would have pushed Jerry Buss to ship Kobe out of town immediately, even if it was for lesser talent.

Later on in that same column, Vecsey goes on to report that Channing Frye is on the trading block:

Untouchable no more?

Is Portland trying to move Channing Frye? At the very least the Blazers tried moving him to Chicago for Tyrus Thomas.

Let me rephrase that: The Bulls are so enthusiastic about Thomas I’m not sure the Blazers ever got to make a legit offer. But I do hear Frye is being shopped. Portland lobbied the Knicks hard for David Lee as partial payment in the Zach Randolph trade and it was either accept Frye or get stuck with Randolph’s $61M, four-year tab.

It wasn’t that long ago that Isiah Thomas basically said that Frye was off limits to all trade offers. Hell, in Dime #28, we ran a story about Frye where we labeled him “The Untouchable Knick.” Since then, he was traded to Portland as part of the Zach Randolph deal and before he even played a game in a Blazers uni, they tried to deal him.