2009-10 Player Review: Reggie Evans

Tip o' the hat to Andres for essentially forcing me to include what I like to think of as a "statistical prologue" and a "statistical epilogue" (and...I largely "borrowed" them as well). So, from now on, I will include some variation of the following at the top of my posts (and another at the bottom):

This article may use several advanced stats. All of these are based on box score statistics that are adjusted for other factors including pace, position and team. A general scale is given for these, and links to advanced explanations are listed at the bottom of the page.

• Wins Produced per 48 Minutes (WP48) – The number of wins a player produces in 48 minutes of play. 0.100 is average and 0.250 is considered the “superstar threshold”. A player a WP48 of 0.000 produces no wins, and any player with a negative WP48 produces a negative number a wins (or, if you prefer, a positive number of losses)

With that out of the way, as promised, here is the 2009-2010 player review for Reggie Evans:

Once upon a time, Evans was a very good player - he actually managed to produce at a level exceeding the "superstar threshold" (a WP48 in excess of 0.300) and spent several years above the "star threshold" (a WP48 in excess of 0.200) - but time stops for no one, and Evans' production and playing time has declined rapidly over the past couple of seasons. That being said, let's see how his production from last year compares with his previous three seasons, as well as the average PF:

I think the advanced stats show something quite clearly: Reggie Evans is not your normal NBA player. He does several things quite poorly, including take shots, making free-throws, getting blocks, assists, avoiding fouls, and avoiding turnovers. That would be enough to doom most players to a very unproductive career - but not Evans. Evans does one thing incredibly well: he rebounds like a madman. As a consequence, his free-throw attempts are also quite above average, because he often gets offensive rebounds close to the basket. As a bonus, he's also above average at getting steals, but it's really his rebounding that helps him out. If only he could shoot free-throws!

The major determinant of a good year for Evans revolves around shooting: is his PPS above or below average? Is his free throw shooting disgustingly terrible or merely atrocious? When Evans shoots well from the field, he posts star and superstar calibre WP48s. If he makes free-throws above the break-even point (47%), that's helpful as well. But both of these things have only happened about 50% of the time in the past four years.

Interestingly, Evans hasn't really shown any signs of age-related decline so far. Sure, his WP48 has declined as he's approached 30, but his rebounding, steals, and other athletic indicators haven't changed significantly. No, it appears that Evans' decline is related to his shooting. That being the case, I can't imagine that his WP48 will be any worse than last year's 0.129, and in fact, he may improve on that mark. The biggest problem is that he's not likely to get many minutes. He's also in the last year of his contract and may be traded - if he manages to find himself on a team that actually plays him, he'll get a chance to produce some wins.

 - Devin.

Stats used

• All basic NBA stats, including play time, salary, and age, are from Basketball-Reference
• Shooting percentages by location are from Hoopdata
• The Wins Produced (WP and WP48) metric is the work of Berri and Schmidt. I use the Automated Wins Produced site, which is powered by data from Basketball-Reference and Yahoo Sports and put together by Andres Alvarez.
• Positional averages (for PPS, etc) are from The Wages of Wins.