Matt Moore lists Tyreke as one of five "impact deals of free agency"

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4. Tyreke Evans: Pelicans -- Four years, $44 million. Here's the new formula for paying your backcourt/wing player who has shown any signs of life whatsoever coming off his rookie deal. Start at $14 million per year. Then subtract two million for any of these factors: age, injury, lack of a prolific season, malcontent attitude.

Voila. That's how you wind up with Evans making as much as Steph Curry, and Ty Lawson making more than them both. You pay the $10 million for the potential, $4 million for the ability, and then you subtract based on mitigating factors.

The extensions given to recent classes under the new CBA have me stuck on criticizing these deals. I thought giving Jrue Holiday between $41 and $46.5 million was insane. Then he played up to it. DeMar DeRozan, even more so, and while DeRozan wasn't close to Holiday, he looked like he might play into it eventually.

So you look at Evans and say, "What if he plays into this?" What if he embraces that Sixth Man role like he reportedly has? What if he becomes a secret weapon in key lineups? And was New Orleans going to get a significantly better player in free agency?

I'm still puzzled by it, just based on their apparent remaining love of Eric Gordon and my own reluctance to abandon the idea of Tyreke Evans: Point Forward Monster. But there are a lot of ways this works out, and only a few it doesn't. Some of it's science, some of it is faith, but in truth, it may be the only thing the Pelicans could do.

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