Tyreke Evans was one of the best NBA rookies ever, but got banned #nba
If I told you that there was once a 6’ 7” rookie point guard that was as good as LeBron’s rookie year, better than Steph Curry, would you believe me? And what if told you that same rookie would eventually get banned.
Tyreke Evans was on track to be a star. He was in conversations with Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Oscar Robertson. But the league would abandon him. *Why? I’m going to go through the* 3 pieces that led to the rise and fall of one of the best rookies of all time and how he got banned from the NBA, especially a team sabotaging him on purpose in piece 2.
He averaged 20 points, 5.8 assists, and 5.3 rebounds in his ROOKIE season? And if plain numbers don't tell the entire story… how about this? Those numbers were only achieved by THREE other players in the then 64-year history of the NBA. Only MJ, LeBron, and Oscar Robertson.
he'd go on to drop a triple-double in a game a month later against the Raptors, going 19, 10, and 10 all this without a jumpshot because Tyreke was shooting 25% from 3, absolutely horrendous.
Everything was on the comeup for Tyreke… just not for the team, not exactly, because the team when from 17 wins to just 25 wins with a Rookie Tyreke, and at the same time, they continued drafting really early in the draft in the following years, namely the addition of another attention-grabbing player like DeMarcus Cousins just one year later…
Well, that's what Piece 2 is all about… because due to several factors - mainly disfunction and lack of development - Tyreke Evans couldn't capitalize off his incredible rookie season.
With their top pick in the 2010 Draft, the Sacramento Kings appeared to have made the correct decision for all the right reasons…
See…
During the 2010-11 season, Tyreke hit a number of setbacks beginning with injuries, well, and a suspension to open the season because of a reckless driving incident over the summer. But early in the season, Tyreke was diagnosed with a plantar fasciitis that either greatly limited his playing time or kept him out of some games altogether. But for the the first half of the season, Tyreke averaged 18.3 points and 5.5 assists on 41% from the field, averaging 37.8 minutes per game!
Just when it began looking like he was on a surge… he reaggravated his foot injury in February and was forced to miss nearly two months
So… the DeMarcus-Tyreke experiment that was supposed to takeoff that year would have to wait another year… and **the Kings had shiny new object syndrome**, in a continual state of distraction thinking something new is worth pursuing.
The Kings still, well, sucked… and it's why they kept landing top pick after top pick, and those picks just so happened to be guys who played Tyreke's position like top prospect Jimmer Fredette, *they literally were drafting guards constantly and taking away his minutes at the point.*
One last chance on the 22 win Memphis Grizzlies. They signed Tyreke to a one-year 'prove-it' style contract, and gave him a chance to be the point guard, the first time in 5 years and man did he prove it averaging a team-high 19 points per game on nearly 40 percent from 3..and Tyreke was playing so well that he was hurting their odds of getting a higher draft pick so they looked to trade him instead mid way into the season and benched him until they did.
But then he'd join the Pacers…where once again, he didn’t play point guard.
His PER was the lowest ever, he just never found his way through the offense. He was definitely on the move… but not to another team… he was OUT of the NBA.
The final piece, Tyreke was banned by the NBA for a violation of the league’s anti-drug policy and the NBA left him to dry.
Tyreke served his ban and was reinstated by the league quietly in 2021, a year early. And no one noticed when he made a return one year later. That’s right, 32 year old Tyreke came back to the G-League but there were barely any headlines. More of a hush hush sort of thing, but Tyreke didn’t disappoint in his first Bucks G-League game, scoring 16 points, 6 assists but only shooting 37% from the field. In his second game, he played only 3 minutes, and in his third, oh he didn’t have a third game because that was it. The Wisconsin Herd waived him. The Wisconsin Herd--
And just like that, everyone forgot about Tyreke, once a hyped up player, didn’t get a shot at redemption. But why?
14 окт 2023
