Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN has reported that the Memphis Grizzlies — who are shopping their veteran wing player Tyreke Evans — plan on sitting the fourth overall draft pick from 2009 between now and the trade deadline on February 8th. Wojnarowski also gave a short list of teams who have expressed interest in Evans, and the Denver Nuggets were included. The Grizzlies are hoping to get a first round pick in return.
The Nuggets are sitting in the eighth spot in the Western Conference and are still very much in playoff contention. They are expected to be active leading up to the trade deadline. Denver has lacked wing depth all year — they’ve struggled to get production out of veteran Wilson Chandler, they’ve stretched the swiss army knife nature of Will Barton’s game to its limit and they’ve been forced to rely a little too heavily on their two-way player Torrey Craig.
Evans has plenty to offer this Nuggets team. The former Memphis Tiger is averaging 19.5 points per game with a shooting split of 45.8/39.2/79.9 — that’s good for an effective field goal percentage of 52.6 and it’s resulted in a PER of 21.8. All of those numbers are higher than Evans’ career averages.
