While everyone else was making a big deal of it, Reggie Evans downplayed the first start of his Nets career.
With his team in the midst of its longest losing streak of the season, Avery Johnson tinkered with his starting lineup, opting to go with Evans over Kris Humphries in last night’s 97-88 loss to the Bucks at Barclays Center. For Evans, who is in his 11th year in the league, the new role was not earth-shattering.
“I’m not really too caught up in the starting aspect,” Evans said. “My wife even asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were starting?’ I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
Johnson, who made the switch during Saturday’s practice, said his team has struggled coming out of the gate in recent games, leading to his decision to sit Humphries. In addition to the team’s interior defense issues, the Nets coach wanted to recapture some of the early-season chemistry Evans and fill-in center Andray Blatche built up as bench players.
“We just wanted to mix it up a little bit,” Johnson said. “We’ve been struggling defensively to start games. The main thing is that when Reggie and Blatche play together, that’s a pretty good combination for us.”
Johnson’s experiment worked early on, with Evans providing a spark in the game’s first three-plus minutes to help the Nets jump out to an 11-2 lead. The success was short-lived — a 17-2 run put Milwaukee on top for good.
“We started out good, and the intensity didn’t stay the whole time,” said Evans, who finished with five points and nine rebounds in 27 minutes.
The start was Evans’ first in almost 19 months. His last was as a member of the Raptors on April 10, 2011, when he scored five points and grabbed 15 rebounds in a win over, ironically, the Nets.
“I wasn’t going crazy,” Evans said. “Starting is not an accomplishment for me. When I came here I wasn’t trying to fight Brook [Lopez] or [Humphries] for a starting position.”
Humphries (four points, seven rebounds) also downplayed the change despite being a staple in the Nets’ lineupfor the majority of his tenure with the team. Before last night, he had started 97 straight games for which he was healthy. The last time his name was not in the starting lineup was on Feb. 16, 2011, a 94-80 loss to Boston.
“I’ve been a guy who hasn’t played at all, I’ve been a guy who comes off the bench, I’ve been a starter,” Humphries said. “I can adjust to anything.”