Prospecticon Says: Tyreke Evans

In most mock drafts, Memphis guard Tyreke Evans won't last long enough for the Bobcats to draft him, but should they get the opportunity to trade up, you can be sure the Cats would love the opportunity to pair him with DJ Augustin.

Listed at 6-5, Evans is as combo as combo guards get, having played both roles in his lone college season, but with far more team success at the point. For me, this is an intriguing aspect of his game, because he simply didn't shoot well enough to inspire confidence in his abilities to play off the ball full time. If, in college, you shoot 27% from three and only 71% from the free throw line, those are indications something's not quite right with the shooting stroke, and it will be exposed in the NBA.

Guards who have success without being able to hit even an 18 foot jumper with consistency are guys with extreme talent in other areas of their games, e.g. Rondo, Rose, and young Tony Parker. Note that those guys are all points, too, which means their teams put up with the inability to shoot from distance because they're primarilly creating, and Allen, Gordon, and Stephen Jackson or Ginobili are there to shoot from the perimeter.

Evans will have to play point guard, developing his jumper quickly at the highest level, or he'll have to play alongside a point guard who can shoot the lights out from three. Either way, it seems the best use of his talents is to play him alongside someone who can share ballhandling duties. On paper, DJ Augustin might be the perfect running mate for Evans, but I'm not sure that kind of oddness in the backcourt would mix well with that kind of weirdness in the front court, where Wallace is the uber-rebounding SF and Diaw is the sweet-passing, three point-shooting, PF.

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