New Orleans guard/forward Tyreke Evans often exudes confidence on the hardwood, playing with a swagger that seems to dare defenders to try to stop him from using his sturdy, 6-foot-6, 220-pound frame to glide past them for layups. Yet even the cocksure Evans admitted Wednesday that – after his nearly 11-month absence from playing, due to right knee surgery – he didn’t think he’d instantly be able to step on the court and dominate.
“Patience (is key) for me,” Evans said of his perspective on coming back, following a 102-98 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers. “I didn’t have a training camp. I wasn’t expecting to come out here and be Superman.”
While he may not be quite ready for superhero duty, Evans has begun to show signs that the player who has averaged 16.5 points, 4.9 rebounds and 5.3 assists over an eight-year NBA career may be returning. During one key second-half stretch Wednesday, the 27-year-old bullied his way past Clippers guard Raymond Felton for a layup, sank a pair of three-pointers and scored on a putback off a teammate’s three-point miss. All told, Evans tallied 10 points over a span of just 2:51 that bridged the third and fourth quarters. After Evans’ flurry, the Pelicans (13-21) had turned a three-point deficit into a two-point lead.
As New Orleans tries to ease Evans back into the rotation following his extended hiatus from hoops, he’s been kept between a total of 11 and 16 minutes in each of his six games and has not appeared in both games of back-to-backs. On Wednesday, he still managed to jam 12 points, five rebounds and five assists in 16:06 of court time, emerging as a key catalyst in NOLA’s top victory of 2016-17 opponent-wise.
“You can see that Tyreke is starting to get his basketball legs, and starting to be the guy that he’s been (in his career),” Pelicans second-year head coach Alvin Gentry said. “It’s been so long since he played competitive basketball, so it takes a while for him to get the timing down. But I thought he did a great, great job.
“What (having him back) does is gives us two facilitators out there, with he and Jrue (Holiday). We like Tyreke because we think he can get downhill and do some things (off the dribble).”
Evans has shot a low percentage from the field early in his comeback (34.2 percent), but as he progresses physically, it’s likely he’ll be able to get to the rim more frequently, his bread-and-butter. He’s taken a big chunk of his shots so far from the perimeter, but said Wednesday that his right knee is feeling very well.
“I hadn’t played in 11 months, but I’m happy to be back,” Evans said in a postgame radio interview with WRNO 99.5 FM. “I’m feeling healthy, with no pain and the knee is feeling great.”
Despite an 0-8 start and 2-10 mark prior to Holiday making his season debut in mid-November, New Orleans has pulled within two games of eighth place in the Western Conference standings, partly due to a three-game winning streak. A chunk of the Pelicans’ in-season improvement has come from playing better in the Smoothie King Center; they started 0-5 at home, but are 9-5 since.
New Orleans concludes its current five-game homestand Friday, when New York (16-15) makes its lone visit to the Crescent City.
“We had a tough start, a lot of injuries, but that’s no excuse,” said Evans, who didn’t make his season debut until Dec. 15. “In this league, nobody feels sorry for you. The only thing we can do is finish the season strong. We’re getting a lot of guys back and getting healthy. We’ve got to take care of homecourt from here on out.”