Tyreke Evans and the Kings Suffer a Season of Flux

It's been an eventful season for Kings G/F Tyreke Evans, if nothing else.

The 2011-2012 regular-season campaign, abbreviated though it was, has brought him health and good fortune, a ball-handler to alleviate his responsibility, a ball-handler to steal away his role as the Kings' starting point guard, a shift into another position as a matter of lineup necessity, a season's worth of waffling performances, and a general inability to adjust to a different state of basketball consciousness.

That's a bit to have on your plate in just a few short months, and yet in spite of it all, Sacramento's situation has remained oddly static. Evans has managed to spiral in place. No matter how much has gone on with him and the Kings over the last few months, he's still every bit the basketball enigma that he ever was, and is still operating under a coach and a team that can't quite get the most out of his talents.

Assigning blame misses the point; the greater complication is that nothing has changed, although everything has, and that Sacramento—with little else to shake up—is running out of options. 

Ailene Voisin of the Sacramento Bee penned a column detailing Evans' unique positioning within a Kings organization that likely can't afford to trade him, and yet may have no other choice:

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Evans, who has a year remaining on his contract, has his own decision to make. He has to figure out what he wants and how badly he wants it. He has to determine what kind of player he wants to be and proceed accordingly, essentially controlling what he can control.

Is he satisfied with his Rookie of the Year trophy? Is it enough to be pain-free for the first time in two years? Is he content being a starter? And, most importantly, will he ever emotionally embrace the shift from point guard to small forward—a total mind, body and soul experience—and become a more engaged, consistent performer?

There is no quick answer hiding behind the locker room doors. Evans is both perplexing and a piece of the Kings' puzzle. He has a unique combination of skills, an agreeable, accommodating personality and the 6-foot-6, 220-pound physique of a basketball god.

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The malady here isn't, as Kings consultant Pete Carril intones in Voisin's column, that Evans hasn't learned to work off the ball. It's that this combination of coach and player and team and ecosystem could never reach that particular endpoint. It's that the product of stubbornness and ineffectiveness is just more stubbornness.

Evans may have sincerely wanted to do right by his team and teammates by moving from point guard to token small forward, but without a considerable effort to improve himself and learn a new way of playing basketball, his intentions would never translate into any useful form. He generally seemed to play the good soldier when Keith Smart demanded more of him, but Evans never quite managed to put plan into action.

Maybe Evans' odd complacency is indicative of some character flaw, or maybe it's merely representative of the Kings organization's greater failings. Regardless of which classification holds a more emblematic truth, Evans' current standing with Sacramento is difficult to sidestep. Something has to give, but little—if anything—can.