Memphis Grizzlies: 5 goals for Tyreke Evans in 2017-18
By Greg Cassoli
3. Adapt to lineup context
Evans is uniquely gifted with the ball in his hands, and has proven himself as both a scorer and a facilitator at various points throughout his career. Memphis will need him to be both. When he’s playing alongside the likes of Marc Gasol, Mike Conley and Chandler Parsons, he needs to look to distribute.
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All of those players are very good shooters, and if Evans can use his verve off the dribble to collapse opposing defenses, the Grizzlies could be looking at a lot of open shots for knocking down, and juicy closeouts for attacking. It may take a while for things to work perfectly. Conley is accustomed to having control of the offense, and he’s proven himself to be uber effective at pulling the strings. He and Evans will each have to find the right balance of time spent on and off the ball.
Should Evans find himself in bench units, however, he may not be surrounded by the same level of shooting and secondary playmaking. In those instances, it will be critical for Evans to do what he’s always done best, get buckets. Doing so may come at the expense of his efficiency, and Evans should really only turn to his isolation game if the Grizzlies can’t find a better way to score. That may be necessary at times.
Oscillating between distributor and scorer may be a bit of a complex ask. Lots of players like to have a single, defined role. Evans has been around long enough that it’s not an unreasonable request.
It’s hard to articulate the best way to measure this goal. There is probably some convoluted process we could go through to establish a metric for different lineup combinations, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just move forward with a “know it when you see” it type approach.