New Orleans Pelicans Should Say Goodbye to Tyreke Evans

It might finally be time to bid the New Orleans Pelicans’ ill-fitting versatilidude goodbye.

This was supposed to be a piece about how the Pelicans should keep Tyreke Evans; there were going to be facts, numbers and opinions about how the roster was flawed, shallow and dependent upon his exact skillset to create shots, defend in small lineups and push the tempo. It’s likely that the page would have been flooded with complaints about how the front office put themselves in a situation where they would have to rely on a player whose fit wasn’t ideal.

But then, the New Orleans Pelicans went out and amazed us. No, really. The team, armed with Danny Ferry and a season’s full of mistakes in mind, went out and got its guys.

After agreeing to deals with Solomon Hill, E’Twaun Moore and Langston Galloway, the Pelicans appear to have both filled the rotation and constructed a schematically conscious roster. At the beginning of Free Agency, it appeared likely that the Pelicans should and would target a fourth big man to mask the various shortcomings of Omer Asik and Alexis Ajinca. And while they’re still likely in the market for one of those guys on a minimum deal (Kendrick Perkins remains a decent option as a deep reserve), the team is up against the cap with point guard Tim Frazier’s qualifying offer still on the books:

With Galloway at ~$4.9M, Babbitt, Douglas, Frazier's QO, & Diallo at $1M, I have the Pels about $2.5M over the cap: pic.twitter.com/efejQKKviV
— Mason Ginsberg (@MasonGinsberg) July 7, 2016

They probably still have use for Frazier; Moore and Galloway are both combo guards who really are most often going to be shooting guards, and Evans is a freakazoid who is really most often going to still be a freakazoid, leaving Holiday as the only remaining “true” point guard on the roster. With his free agency imminent (next summer), and Tyreke’s questionable future status, Frazier makes sense on a small, short deal to give the team further time to gauge him and stay financially flexible as each player on the roster becomes eligible for a new deal.

However, even assuming the team declines to guarantee the salaries of Toney Douglas and Luke Babbitt, both five days away from their July 12th decision deadlines, fitting in Frazier remains nearly impossible. He can certainly earn more than his ~$1M qualifying offer on the open market, and, with point guard so weak in this year’s FA market (hi there, Bulls), the Pelicans have forced themselves up against a wall.

That leaves them with one good option, assuming they’re interested in retaining Frazier (and probably even if they’re not interested in doing so): trade Tyreke Evans. It has been oft-questioned just how dedicated to Evans the Pelicans truly are, and his fit has never quite been ideal next to Jrue Holiday and the non-shooters dotting the Pelicans roster up to this point. Now that the Pelicans seem destined to go small much more often this year, keeping Tyreke makes little sense.

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I’ve argued in the past that he can make up for smaller guards’ defensive liabilities by basically playing a different position on each side of the ball, but the Pelicans have shored up on players whose own versatility makes Tyreke’s much less valuable. Solomon Hill and Dante Cunningham have the potential to improve their respective shooting accuracy even further, Moore and Galloway can have some real fun manipulating their own gravity off-ball and the stars will stay stars. Everything will be more open this year.

In some ways, that would benefit Evans. However, as the roster moves closer to the idealistic offensive utopia of Alvin Gentry’s dreams, Evans’s fit in New Orleans starts to become as uncomfortable as it is around the rest of the league. If he was a different type of player – one more comfortable off-ball, as a screener or in the post – he could be dominant in less minutes under Gentry. But outside of a few hot shooting spurts, he’s shown himself to be valuable only when the ball finds his hands. Even those shooting streaks were largely a product of unsustainably nice pull-up numbers.

In a bizarro world not far from what we might see in Gentry’s rotations this year, Reke could play a modified version of the Draymond Green role in Oakland. Imagine the potential of his playmaking if he was the roller on plays like this:

Yowza.

In a vacuum, it’s easy to pinpoint ball dominance as Tyreke’s core problem, but it’s not that simple. Tyreke has made money in this league using his finishing and playmaking ability as a primary ball-handler. In New Orleans, he parlayed those abilities into a starring role in a playoff appearance. On this team, he no longer fits.

He definitely doesn’t belong in a starting lineup with Holiday, Buddy Hield (or E’twain Moore), Solomon Hill, Anthony Davis and Omer Asik. He also doesn’t fit as nicely in small lineups as Cunningham, Quincy Pondexter or any of the new free agents; in this potentially new era of Pelicans basketball, movement and space are of the utmost importance. Even the stars- Holiday and Davis – will need to cut back on their worst mid-range ball-pounding to make things as efficient and spacious as possible.