Pacers Trade for Jeremy Evans, a 28-Year-Old Forward Who Won a Dunk Contest that One Time

The Indiana Pacers made a small move, giving up essentially nothing to acquire Jeremy Evans from the Dallas Mavericks.

The Indiana Pacers have traded for 6’9″ forward Jeremy Evans and cash, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports. There is no word yet on what the Pacers gave up to the Dallas Mavericks in the deal, but it is probably nothing worth caring about.

Jeremy Evans, a 28-year-old forward out of Western Kentucky University, has one year remaining on his contract for $1.2 million.

Dallas presumably wanted to dump a bit of money off its salary cap and are thus trading him away to Indiana. Mark Cuban is also sending along at least that much money to pay the salary that Larry Bird agreed to take on. It’s quite possible that the Pacers are even getting paid a million or two dollars on top of that, which will make team owner Herb Simon happy — a key consideration for any good GM.

The only downside for Indiana — which is probably sending a (possibly even protected) future second-round pick or the draft rights to some guy you’ve never heard of — is losing $1.2 million in current cap space.

After taking on Jeremy Evans, Indiana now has roughly $9 million left in cap room this summer. And they may not even be preparing to spend it.

Adding Evans brings the Pacers roster to 14 players out of a maximum 15 allowed by league rules. Bird will presumably also soon sign 2016 second-round pick Georges Niang to a contract to fill out the roster.

Doing so will also bring the Pacers above the NBA’s “salary cap floor,” which means they don’t have to continue spending anymore this summer if they so choose.

But, if Bird does find someone worth spending the remaining $9 million on, he does have options.

Shayne Whittington’s contract is non-guaranteed, so he can be waived immediately to free up a roster spot if necessary. (Whittington’s deal is another potential candidate to be the thing Bird has traded to the Mavericks, which would then waive his non-guaranteed deal immediately.)

Another side story about this move is that is may signal that Bird doesn’t think he can get Jeff Teague to sign a renegotiate-and-extend contract this summer.

The finances of doing so made some sense on Teague’s end if Indiana had $10 million in cap space to offer. But cutting into that figure doesn’t bode well for Bird getting that done.

While it doesn’t change the total package that the Pacers can offer by all that much, it does make you wonder. Heading to that negotiating table with Teague’s agent, you would think Larry would want to preserve all the room possible. If he actually thought he could get Teague to sign the extension, leaving open that possibility would likely trump doing Mark Cuban a favor while possibly putting some money into his owner’s pocket.

All this arcane logistics talk is a bit insulting to Jeremy Evans, a six-year NBA vet. On top of getting some cash for his owner, Bird probably thinks Evans has some talent.

Evans’ only NBA notoriety comes from winning the 2012 Slam Dunk Contest, in which he beat out Paul George, among others. Although dunking is clearly what he does best, he obviously can do a bit more than that. As a jumping jack athlete who can play either forward position, Evans projects to become an emergency substitute who can do some homeless-man’s Thad Young stuff.

In his career, Jeremy Evans has played 78% of his minutes at the 4 and the remaining 22% at small forward. He has athleticism and some positional versatility, both of which are potentially helpful in the modern game for a franchise that keeps hyping its desire to play faster.

He has also been an adequate rebounder and shot-blocker in the limited minutes he has actually seen on an NBA court.

Jeremy Evans has averaged 12.0 points, 8.8 rebounds, and 1.7 blocks per 36 minutes during his career. In his one season actually appearing in a rotation, for the 2013-14 Utah Jazz, he essentially matched those rates while grabbing 4.7 rebounds per game in just 18 minutes a night.

It remains unlikely that Evans will actually make the Pacers rotation. But he may get a chance to challenge Lavoy Allen for minutes at the four spot if Nate McMillan really does want to make fast and small part of the team’s new identity.