What We Know About Tyreke Evans, And What We See

“It passes the ball when it needs to on a fast break. It does this whenever it is told. "

“It passes the ball to its friend, or else it gets the hose again.”

PUT THE FUCKING BALL IN THE BASKET!

the mantra has always been from the noisy minority…“Trade our best player!”.
Its Evans turn on the conveyor belt.

Hollinger describes what I saw last night – "Every half-court Kings play is a torturous isolation. Whoever’s “turn” it is goes to the basket and passes only as a last resort when his path is cut off. This was partly true a year ago too, but Sacramento just keeps importing more players like this — in the past year the Kings imported Thornton, Outlaw, John Salmons, J.J. Hickson and Jimmer Fredette. The only willing passer on the team is Chuck Hayes, and he gets the ball only when it bounces off the rim to him."

….that is all.

is that he is down in nearly every category this year.
The most glaring are:

14% 3 point shooting.
50% free throw shooting.
2 Rebounds per game.
2.7 assists (accompanied by 2 TO’s) per game.
14.3 PPG on 11.7 attempts per game.

In comparison, look at Brandon Jennings so far this year:

29% 3 point shooting.
85% free throw shooting.
2.7 Rebounds per game.
5.3 assists (accompanied by 2 TO’s) per game.
22.7 PPG on 16.7 attempts per game.

Tyreke had 1 great year, was hurt last year, and was supposed to come back this year showing off that year 1 was no fluke.
So far he has been a disappointment and I would rather have a guy like Stephen Curry or Brandon Jennings, both of who were available and had tried out for the Kings in the ’09 draft.

Obviously hindsight is 20/20 and its unfair to say that Petrie should have selected either of those 2 guards, (or Rubio for that matter), but the writing was on the wall from day 1 with Tyreke. Everyone in the nation questioned whether or not he could be a True PG.

I’m personally ready to chalk this experiment up as a failure and would move Tyreke over to Small Forward, put MT23 at the 2 and Jimmer at the 1.

In closing, Brandon Jennings is excelling this year, Tyreke is not.
Its obvious we need to blame John Salmons.

Here are the 3 things that did not happen in 3 games played but better happen in the 4th.

1. Want to see at least 2 people touch the ball on fast breaks (Reke!!)
2. Reke!! needs to start looking for his teammates more when driving to the basket
3. Reke!! push the damn ball in transitions, enough with always walking the ball up court

The problem with a 3 guard rotation is size. Portland killed us with theirs. And now we have a 6’5 Center. No shot blockers, small guards, not good. Normally a team goes small for speed, but the Kings don’t push the ball and just not that quick.

I was gonna write a fanpost on this but ill post here. Ill start with the 3 on 1 break everyone is talking about. One of two things, either Tyreke would rather go to the line, than take an easy assist (Not good), or Tyreke is not aware enough to see or know to pass in that situation (Not good). If your franchise PG does not want to, or else doesnt understand he is supposed to give a teammate an easy layup, especially a shooter that often uses a layup to get confindence, then I cant say that is a franchise PG i want to build a team around. I get this is only the 3rd game together, and no practice, but nobody can say we havent seen this before from Tyreke on the break.

Moving forward, take a look at Phil Perspectives post above, exactly what I was thinking during the game. Players waiting for their turn. This team is full of “Alpha scorers” on offense, guys that want the ball, to make a play, instead of being a part of the offense and make a play when it presents itself.

Jimmer and MT are gunners, and Good Cuz has a world of potential as long as Bad Cuz doesnt keep him on the bench with dumb fouls. Jimmer and MT and Cuz also are not good defenders, so this team is desperate for a pass first offensive player, that brings it on D. Can Tryeke be that guy? Of course he can, hes the longest PG in the league and has the tools to be an elite defender and to create for his teammates. Will he be that guy? It remains to be seen.

If some shots start falling, FTs included, and the wins start coming, the team will start passing more and looking for each other in the offense. I know its early, so im not gonna use any statistics, but if it cant work, the top players that come to mind that would fit that role, Rondo (if Boston starts 6-16 or something and has an injury to a Big 3 player, and decides the run is over), Collison (we trick them that its a chemisty issue and Evans is an upgrade for Indy), Heinrich (Atlanta is capped out, issue is Heinrich isnt a true pg)

Oh, but Reke worked on his free throws, I feel better all ready. How bout bring in some teammates, and running some plays. The premise of this team was to build around Reke, a guy who will can drive and kick with the best of them. How about practicing with 400 pass and dish plays, instead of 400 free throws. Free throws will come around, he won’t shoot 50% all season. I’m not ready to give up on him, love what he could bring to this team, just needs to improve.

call them, leader!

lets focus on passing the ball. Don’t care what happend at 2am. Pass when driving the ball during games, that’s it

Tyreke is not a true point guard……Duh????

I wish there was a passing stat that tracked how many times a player passed the ball after getting it. I think this would show how “selfish” a player really is. There are many cases when a player passes the ball and the other player doesn’t make a shot or passes again. I think this kind of stat would really show us which players are “selfish”.

I have thought about watching the last 3 games with a clip board in my lap to tally how many times Tyreke touched the ball and how many times he passed it. And then do it with Jimmer or any other player to see how it compares.

Rose ended the night with 29 points, 10-11 from the foul line, as well as 16 assists and 8 boards

to Tyreke, instead of having to talk about this BS again this year.

Time to adjust my New Years resolution.

This might sound convoluted and crackpot-ish, but the other night I was wondering if all assists are created equal. Watching Monta Ellis in go 3 1/2 quarters with 2 assists before picking up 6 in garbage time after the game was out of reach. There has to be a way to weight assists in a game that’s close compared to a blowout. I’m just now barely literate in baseball metrics, so my basketball metrics chops are amateur night-level.

I’m starting to feel like I’m reading the SacBee comments section….

Just 3 games in the season and you want to trade Tyreke, a guy that made 20/5/5 in his rookie season. He will improve, just wait and see.

Westphal has mutiple guys bringing the ball up and starting the offense. We have no set PG on our team right now. Put Tyreke as the PG in a normal offensive system and those numbers would go up. I believe the play would stabalize too. I don’t really understand what Westphal is doing at the moment, but then again, that is no different than his first two years too. I hope the New Year brings a decent coach back to Sacramento.

Tyreke leads the team currently with 2.7. Don’t think it’s a Tyreke issue right now, it’s a system and cohesion issue, as well as a little bit of fatigue from guys missing shots. As TZ mentioned we’re also getting to the line a bunch, which doesn’t ever end in an assist.

We all desperately want Tyreke to develop into our very own LeBron James: Sacramento edition, but it isn’t going to happen. Witnessing Tyreke’s NBA body and flashy ballhandling have us all hoping that he will develop his decision making, shooting and ability to make teammates better.. but be honest Kings fans, what area(s) of his game have improved since he became a King in 2009?

We traded away our best player to give Reke the keys to the franchise, and now we’ve surrounded him with a lot of NBA caliber scorers and shooters. I realize it’s only been three games, but let’s not act like its only this year he’s struggled to get others involved.

Granted, he’s averaged over 5 assists per game for his career. But is it really that impressive of a number if he has the ball in his hands as often as he does?

Our core right now and going forward is DeMarcus, Tyreke, Thornton, Jimmer and JJ. The one guy of that unit with an embarrassingly low basketball IQ is Tyreke and I worry it hasn’t gotten better and never will.

But who else thinks that it looks like Mike Brown is texting on the sideline while Tyreke drives right past Fisher in that picture above?