Reggie Evans: Rebound Rebound Rebound Rebound Rebound Rebound Rebound Rebound Rebound

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Reggie Evans, Tyson Chandler
Reggie Evans (AP)
Number: 30

Position: PF

Height: 6’8”

Weight: 245

Years Pro: 11

Hometown: Pensacola, FL

Prior to NBA: University of Iowa

Twitter: @ReggieEvans30

Analysis:
Rebound Rebound Rebound Rebound Rebound Rebound Rebound Rebound Rebound. That’s one Rebound for every 20-rebound game Evans had last season, leading the league despite playing under 25 minutes per game.

It only seems fair to showcase Reggie Evans after Andray Blatche, the Rocksteady to Blatche’s Bebop. The two traveled to Jamaica together to aid the Ru John Foundation for a full week and are close friends as well as frontcourt mates. Indeed, the two had fun last season, playing a game with a backpack of disabilities and outscoring opponents by 3.4 points per 100 possessions when the two shared the court for 551 minutes.

Evans isn’t just a one-trick pony. He’s a one-trick fire-breathing mastodon sent from the future under orders to perform singular acts of rebounding destruction on the NBA sans mercy. He doesn’t just corral rebounds, he swallows them whole. He calls himself “The Joker” and causes similar anarchy on missed shots. Evans grabbed over 26 percent of all available rebounds when he was on the floor last season, setting an NBA record (minimum 50 games). Think about it this way: the average player in a game of two-on-two — not five-on-five — grabs 25 percent of all available rebounds. Evans rebounded at an above-average rate for a game that has less than one team’s worth of players.

Evans was so good he even rebounded at the exact same rate as Kevin Garnett and Brandon Bass, last year’s Boston Celtics starting frontcourt, combined:

So yes. He’s pretty good at the rebounding thing.

He makes up for that one skill by being abjectly unwatchable at nearly every other part of the game, to the point where it’s endearing. “I ain’t tryin’ to score,” Evans famously said before last season, and you can see why. He’ll throw basketballs into the underside of the rim on layups. He’ll throw a pass out of bounds that had no intended target. He’ll grab opponents in the junk. He’ll dribble between his legs and time-warp to sixth grade AAU basketball. He’s so bad at free throws that the home crowd cheered as loud as they have all season out of some odd combination of pity and faith. He’ll follow through on a jumper and his shooting hand ends up in Tunisia.

That’s not to say he’s got no skills whatsoever. He’s decent enough finding passing lanes within six feet (an underrated skill in the post when you’re looking to set up Brook Lopez). He was the team’s best interior defender for the better part of last season, cross-switching enough to let the lumbering Lopez hang back in the paint. He’s tough as all hell and doesn’t give an inch to anyone. He got a tooth knocked out in the middle of the game, left it in front of Ian Eagle, and re-entered the game after a timeout. He learned to play basketball the same way mountain lions learn to survive.

But the Nets, along with every team he’s been on in NBA history, signed him to do one thing. Rebound. He does that one thing. Now that the Nets have added Kevin Garnett and Andrei Kirilenko, he can cease his reign as a full-time starter and go back to being the spot rebounding pest that gave him his career.

Previous: Tornike Shengelia Next: Kevin Garnett


Full List:

| Shaun Livingston | Deron Williams | Tyshawn Taylor | Alan Anderson | Joe Johnson | Jason Terry | Andrei Kirilenko | Paul Pierce | Tornike Shengelia | Reggie Evans | Kevin Garnett | Mirza Teletovic | Andray Blatche | Brook Lopez | Mason Plumlee |