Knee injections just what the doctor ordered for Tyreke Evans

After a horrible stretch of play for the Indiana Pacers, Tyreke Evans has turned his game around recently. How much did knee injections help?

Tyreke Evans had a run to forget from mid-November to around Christmas. The Indiana Pacers guard pretty much did everything poorly, and he couldn’t make a shot. He was struggling so much that I started to wonder if he should be exiled from the rotation.

Then Tyreke surprised us all and announced that he had injections done on his knee. His knee injury had been known, he missed a few games here are then with soreness. But after a victory over the Atlanta Hawks last month, Evans announced that he had PRP injections in his knee.

PRP (platelet-rich plasma) injections “accelerate the healing of injured tendons, ligaments, muscles and joints”.  Apparently, they were all Evans needed. Evans explained them to J Michel of the Indy Star:

“I felt a lot better. I was moving better, running faster, pain-free.” Evans stated he didn’t think he needed them before the season started, but he said “felt sluggish” once the season started, so he opted for the injections.

The change has been noticeable. From the time that Evans began starting games in the absence of Victor Oladipo up through Christmas, he averaged 9.2 points and 2.5 assists on a pathetic 32.4 percent shooting. He also averaged 2.4 turnovers per game. He was incredibly ineffective, and his average game score on basketball reference was 5.1 across the 15 games.

But since that Atlanta game, we have seen Evans be much, much better. In the 4 games since, he has shot over 50 percent from the field, and he’s only turning it over slightly over 1 time per game. His scoring average is over 12 points per game, and he is a combined +27 over this stretch. Finally, Evans is looking effective.

He looks more decisive, and he’s his quick decision making lets him be more effective. Watch here as he attacks the rim right after he catches the ball and is able to easily make it to the rim:

When he shows downhill burst like that right on the catch, he is substantially more effective. On the season, when Evans shoots within 0-2 seconds of catching the ball, his effective field goal percentage is 56.4 percent. When that range rises to 2-6 seconds, that percentage falls substantially, all the way down to 40.2 percent. When he holds the ball for far too long (6+ seconds), his eFG% is 42.6 percent. In summary, decisive Evans (and catch and shoot Evans) is a much better and efficient scorer than ball-stopping Evans.

We are seeing much more of the latter recently. 24.3 percent of Evans shots have come between 0-2 seconds after the catch since Christmas, which is over a percentage point higher than his frequency pre-December 25th. He looks more aggressive and resolute over the past four games, and he looks more effective as a result.

All the Indiana Pacers can hope is that this version of Tyreke Evans is here to say. This is the guy they were hoping they signed in the offseason. The early returns suggest that these injections were all he kneeded.