New Orleans Pelicans Year in Review: Tyreke Evans

For all the disappointments this New Orleans Pelicans season bred none may have brought more despair than the 2015-2016 season of Tyreke Evans.

Coming off a season where he helped break the New Orleans Pelicans through to the postseason as their second best player, the expectations were sky high for Tyreke Evans. With new coach Alvin Gentry placing emphasis on playing with pace and getting out in transition, it sounded like a match made in heaven for the versatile slashing guard. With his excellent ball handling and his relentless desire to get to the rim, getting out and running seemed like the perfect system for Tyreke to finally breakout as a star. Gentry even handed the reigns over to Evans by letting him run the offense at the point guard position (his preferred position) .

However this dream scenario would quickly turn into a nightmare for the Pelicans and Tyreke Evans. Tyreke would suffer what Alvin Gentry called “knee soreness,” but later it would be discovered that Tyreke Evans would miss 6 to 8 weeks with knee surgery. This would serve as foreshadowing for the type of year the Pelicans and Evans were about to endure.

Evans would miss the first 17 games games of the regular season, which contributed to the Pelicans poor 4-13 start. However, his return sparked a bit of optimism. In his debut game, Evans would post a stat line of 20, 10, and 5 on 7-12 shooting. The team ultimately lost, but the play of Evans was inspiring and offered plenty to look forward to.

The honeymoon phase for Evans soon disintegrated, though, and as the team kept losing, the play of Evans become more and more heavily scrutinized. His ball dominant ways would clash with the ideology of Gentry, who preaches off ball movement and for the ball to be swung. As the season would continue to unfold, the bad habits of Tyreke would become exemplified: pounding the ball until the shot clock wore down and forgetting plays after timeouts.

More from Pelican Debrief

The play of Tyreke Evans was flat out unwatchable at times ( go watch the Christmas game against the Heat). The thing is, for as poorly as he looked, his offensive numbers remained impressive. He produced 15.2 points per game, 6.6 assist, and 5.2 rebounds. Evans sported a PER of 17.9 and True Shooting percentage of 53.4, both well above average the NBA player. The point is that, no matter how bad Tyreke Evans looked at times this season, he is still a productive player.

The real debate with Evans is whether a team can become a contender with him getting big minutes or can he adjust his style of play for the betterment of the team. Data from this year would demonstrate that Evans cannot. According to Synergy stats, Evans ranked 11th in isolation frequency, and, out of those ranked ahead of him, only Kobe Bryant ranked in a lower percentile (29.2). Evans ranked in the 43rd percentile despite attempting an isolation play 17.4 percent of the time. His field goal percentage in isolation plays was a woeful 32.2 percent, signifying that Evans, in spite of being a ball dominant player, is a poor isolation scorer.

However, the most alarming stat about Evans may be his infectiveness when driving to the rim. Synergy stats constitutes a drive as “any touch that starts at least 20 feet from the hoop and is dribbled within 10 feet of the hoop and excludes fast breaks. Measures the total number of drives as well as the points, assists and shooting percentages on drives to the basket.” This can be attributed to injuries, but Evans finished 7th in the league in drives per game with 10.4. Despite this high frequency of going to the basket, Tyreke would only shoot 43.8 percent on drives this season, the worst of any player in the top 15. Even more worrisome is the fact that Tyreke has a negative assist to turnover ratio on drives, averaging 0.8 assist to 0.9 turnovers. For a player that prides himself on his ability to get to the rim, it is alarming to see such poor efficiency on his drives.

So, where did all of Tyreke’s baskets come from this year? Now, while the Synergy stats highlights Evans failures on drives, he was still his most effective around the rim. According to NBA.com player tracking, Evans shot 63 percent on driving layups and amazingly 91% of these shots were unassisted. Evans still is at his best when creating for himself, and, when watching him play, it is clear that this can lead to stagnation and usually ends up with 1 pass or an Evans drive.

More from Pelicans News

Now, Evans may not be the most efficient player on the court, but his ability to create something out of nothing should not be completely disregarded. For as many times as his isolation play hurt the Pelicans, it has rescued them from defeat at times. Tyreke Evans, for better or worse, is certainly an enigma. At his best, he is a joy to watch when breaking ankles and making defenders look foolish with a nasty euro step. At his worst, you may find yourself questioning if he belongs in any rotation with boneheaded turnovers and ill-advised shot attempts in crucial moments.

However, Evans may have also added a new wrinkle to his game in the form of an effective three point shot. He shot 38 percent from three point range while taking a career high 5.5 attempts per game from behind the arc. The 25 game sample size makes it hard to tell if this is a sustainable mark or just the result of a small sample size, but Evans looked much more confident shooting from three this year and did not fade back nearly as much. In fairness, it is likely his more efficient three point percentage is a mixture of both possibilities. It has improved, but the percentage spike to 38 percent for a career 28 percent shooter is likely an anomaly. Still, it is not crazy to assume that Evans’s three point percentage can hover around that 35 percent clip. After all, he has improved his percentage every year he has been in New Orleans.

Next: Eric Gordon year in review

Going forward there are major question marks when it comes to the future of Tyreke Evans. This season, even the usually durable “Wolvereke” was subject to the injury bug. In his first two years in New Orleans Evans, played in 72 games and 79 games, but this year he was limited to only 25 games. What is even more alarming is that, in less than a year, Evans has had three surgeries performed on his right knee. Even more concerning for the Pelicans, it was made clear on multiple occasions that Evans strengths do not coincide with the offense that Alvin Gentry wants to implement. With only one more year on his contract and his value at an all-time low, the Pelicans may be hard pressed to find good value for a player that just one year ago seemed ready to peak. NBA teams are surely aware of the talent that Tyreke Evans possesses, but the injury scares are sure to limit his market. The once bright future for Tyreke Evans in New Orleans has quickly turned cloudy and left management with far more questions than answers.

Home/Pelicans News