The Indiana Pacers need more than breaking even from Tyreke Evans

Whether it’s been Rodney Stuckey, Monta Ellis, or now Tyreke Evans, the Indiana Pacers struggle to sign the right player to compliment their star continues.

No one wants Tyreke Evans to play himself out of the Indiana Pacers rotation. It looked like a real possibility for most of the season, but a post-Christmas surge was starting to change that narrative.

But the loss to the Toronto Raptors and another struggle against the Cleveland Cavaliers has us wondering once again if the Pacers need to accept the future and put Aaron Holiday back into the lineup.

While Tyreke got himself out of the title of the worst shooter in the NBA, his 37.1 percent shooting from the floor on the season still arguably makes him the 10th worst shooter in the league.

Among guards, Evans’ turnover percentage is near the bottom of the league, a problem for the bench’s primary ball-handler. He attacks the rim at one of the highest rates in the league and this might be a good thing if he made more than a 46 percent of his shots at the rim. The one thing he does well offensively is knock down 3-pointers, but the volume isn’t there to bring his numbers out of the abyss.

It’s Monta Ellis redux, it’s Rodney Stuckey Part II, but at least Godney’s injuries served as a larger reason for his issues than it appears with Evans. All three did enough to almost break even — statistically speaking — but Ellis might be the worst of the bunch once his salary is factored in. After all, this is only a one-year deal for Evans.

When the Pacers signed him, they knew there was a risk. It’s a big reason why they only signed him to that one-year, $12 million deal. At the time of signing, you could say that was smart — in the sense that they mitigated risk — but now it feels like another missed opportunity.

But part of the frustration comes from the face his production — or lack of — could have come at a lower price.

The race to zero

While Lance Stephenson might not have made this season’s team any better, he could have been on the roster for a relatively low salary. But it was clear when they didn’t pick up his team option that Kevin Pritchard and the Pacers believed they could replace Born Ready’s statistical impact.

With Evans underperforming, it feels like the trend of the Pacers failing to nail down their secondary playmaker is continuing for another season.

Stephenson’s fan-favorite status only makes it hurt a little bit more when you see he still statistically was better for the Pacers last year than Evans is now. Even compared to the final (healthy) years of Stuckey and Ellis, Evans is hardly an improvement.

Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 1/8/2019.

Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 1/8/2019.

There’s a lot of ways you could sort those four players stats, but all you see if a bunch of guys struggling to find zero in the Value Over Replacement Player column. So while Stephenson earned himself a zero last season, he did it inexpensively for the Pacers. Evans is doing slightly less overall than Stephenson but for three times the cost.

At least Stephenson is still in the mid-to-late prime of his career. Much like Stuckey and Ellis, Evans is a signing that feels a year or two too late. It might have been a bad idea a year ago, too.

His season with the Memphis Grizzlies is his Name of the Rose —  merely a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downward trajectory.

The Indiana Pacers missed an opportunity

As our own Tony East argued at the time, it was a great deal for Indiana. A potential backup playmaker to Victor Oladipo on a one-year deal. Pritchard didn’t make the mistake of messing up the Pacers cap sheet and signed a player coming off their best season in years.

Even though Tyreke isn’t living up to his contract, the Pacers are avoiding making it a long-term mistake.

But the problem is in the missed opportunity, even a small one. One of the bigger ones, however, would be J.J. Redick. The knockdown shooter said he was extremely close to signing with Indiana before the Philadelphia 76ers put more money on the table. Perhaps Indiana could have upped their potential investment as well if they had left Evans off their big board.

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Obviously, the would complicate things with Doug McDermott or Bojan Bogdanovic, but one assumes if they hadn’t been looking at Evans, then they would have planed more to accommodate the arrival of Redick. And with the lack of 3-point attempts for the Pacers, it is hard to see how Redick wouldn’t have been the better option — in hindsight, at least.

Even if it wasn’t a name like Redick’s, a player like Elfrid Peyton could have had a long-term future, unlike the aging vet. And Payton is making over half his shots.

There’s still some hope for Tyreke Evans

Hopefully, these two bad games that interrupted the string of post-Christmas games aren’t a regression to the mean. After all, the entire Pacers team was looked out of sync the past few games.

Indiana just needs Evans to score without eating up too many possessions. They don’t need 20-point nights as much as they need more 10-point outings where he shooting five times or less and heads to the foul line often.

But at the halfway point of the season, it isn’t wise to bet he’ll pull out of his poor shooting ways.

The Indiana Pacers will still win with Tyreke Evans just breaking even in his impact on the game. But if that holds true, it feels like the first free agent mistake of Pritchard’s tenure and not the first or last time the Pacers got less than they hoped for from a mid-level free agent.