SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Tyreke Evans
has won hundreds of trophies in his young basketball career and many of
them seem to have lost an arm, a basketball or some other piece in his
mother's care.
Bonita Evans will have to wait to get
the NBA Rookie of the Year trophy Evans won Thursday until some
safeguards are in place in the home he is building her in Delaware.
"She's broken too many," Evans said.
"I probably have 400 trophies and about a hundred of them broke. I'd
come downstairs and she'd try to glue them back together but it was too
late. I didn't care about it. But the main important trophies, we're
going to put them in a glass case for her."
Evans capped his fabulous rookie year
for the Sacramento Kings by beating out Golden State's Stephen Curry and
Milwaukee's Brandon Jennings for the coveted award.
Evans became the fourth rookie ever to
average at least 20 points, five rebounds and five assists per game,
joining Oscar Robertson, Michael Jordan and LeBron James in an exclusive
club.
"This is one of the awards I had a
goal of since I came into the NBA, being rookie of the year," Evans
said. "I'm proud it came true. It was one of my dreams since I was
little. I finally had a chance for my dream to come true."
Evans was the fourth pick in last
year's NBA draft after spending one season at Memphis. Like Chicago's
Derrick Rose a year ago, that one year at Memphis was enough to make him
Rookie of the Year.
He led all rookies in scoring at 20.1
points per game, was second in assists at 5.8 per game and fifth in
rebounds at 5.3.
"After maybe the first week or two in
the regular season, the level of consistency that he settled into was
just remarkable given his age and one year of experience in college,"
Kings president of basketball operations Geoff Petrie said. "It was just
fun to watch it all unfold."
Evans was the only rookie to appear
on all 123 ballots from a media panel, getting 67 first-place votes and
491 total points. Curry was second with 43 first-place votes and 391
points, with Jennings getting 12 first-place votes and 204 points.
Players were awarded five points for a first-place vote, three for a
second and one for a third.
While Jennings got off to a fast
start, scoring 55 points in his seventh career game, and Curry finished
the season with a flourish, Evans was consistently strong all season
long.
Evans drew praise from around the
league, with Kobe Bryant calling him a "grown man" when asked to assess
the rookie race after playing Curry and Evans in successive nights in
March.
Evans' performance this season
brought life back to Arco Arena, where fans had grown disinterested in
recent years as the Kings struggled. There was even a rally planned at a
Sacramento mall on Thursday night in Evans' honor.
Evans erased any disappointment from
last year's lottery, when the Kings ended up with the fourth pick in the
draft despite having the league's worst record.
With top pick Blake Griffin sidelined
for the season for the Los Angeles Clippers with a knee injury, second
pick Hasheem Thabeet spending part of the season for Memphis in the NBA
Development League and fifth pick Ricky Rubio staying in Europe instead
of signing with Minnesota, there were no regrets in Sacramento with how
the draft played out.
"I know there was a lot of real
disappointment at that moment," Petrie said. "It just shows that life is
real uncertain and good things can come out of what appear to be not so
good things sometimes. It all worked out."
After a disappointing home opener
when he scored only three points and didn't make a shot from the field,
Evans took over the Kings after leading scorer Kevin Martin went down
with an early injury. He scored at least 20 points in seven consecutive
games.
Evans was remarkably consistent,
averaging between 19.4 points and 22.1 points per game in every full
month of the season.
"He's the most consistent rookie I've
ever seen," coach Paul Westphal said. "There's nothing but a great
career in Tyreke's future. Knowing him, I know he doesn't view this as
an achievement. It's just a start to his career."
Curry, the son of former NBA player
Dell Curry, might have been playing better than any rookie by the end of
the season. He averaged 17.5 points, a rookie-best 5.9 assists, 4.5
rebounds and 1.9 steals per game for the Warriors.
But he was much better in the final
three months, averaging 21.9 points, 5.1 rebounds and 7.5 assists per
game after Feb. 1. That vaulted him right into the rookie race, giving
Northern California NBA fans something worthwhile to follow while the
Warriors and Kings struggled through another difficult season.
Jennings entered the league with
plenty of scrutiny after bypassing college to play last season in Italy.
He immediately quieted the skeptics with the highest-scoring game for a
rookie in 41 years against Golden State in November.
He averaged 15.5 points, 5.7 assists
and 3.4 rebounds for the season, but shot just 37 percent from the
floor. The one major advantage Jennings had over Evans and Curry was
that he helped lead Milwaukee to the playoffs, while Sacramento and
Golden State are back in the lottery again.