Believe it or not, Tyreke Evans doesn’t clamor for this kind of attention.

In fact, all the attention of the rally for Evans to be Rookie of the Year tonight had Evans feeling a bit embarrassed.

That’s right: Embarrassed.

“A little bit,” Evans conceded. “They had the NBA All Stars up there (on the jumbotron) talking about my game. I was trying not to let it get to me.”

Evans, of course, turned in a 19 point, 10 rebound, 10 assist effort on a night in which so much attention was devoted to him. He kept the game ball, too.

It would seem easy for one to be a bit conceited with 5,000 cutouts of his face throughout the stands.

But that’s not Evans’ personality. And he was ready for the ribbing he took from his teammates.

“It looked pretty ugly,” said forward Carl Landry with a laugh.

via Kings Blog and Q&A: Postgame reaction: Evans doesn’t bask in attention.

Evans’ triple-double is going to get overturned most likely within the next 24 hours, which is both fair once I saw the replay, and sad, because as Ziller pointed out in a FanHouse thread, he would have snagged it most likely anyway. I mean, it is the Raps we’re talking about.

I’m still having a hard time finding any way you can argue that any other player is rookie of the year. Curry’s a nice player. He’ll be having hot offensive nights while Golden State wins 30 games a year for the next half-decade.  But Evans has a unique ability to not only generate ridiculous numbers, but to have those numbers be critical to the team. That, however, is probably a subjective assessment that would shift depending on if you’re on Team Reke or Team ThinnySkins.

I can’t help but feel the Kings are on the right path, even with as few wins as they have. There are teams whose rosters are so disparagingly flawed that even wins feel like losses. The Indiana Pacers and Philadelphia Sixers come to mind. And there are teams that can legitimately look at their roster and say they’re getting better, and that they have the pieces together to improve each year. The Kings are like that. Evans’ rookie season matters, because he’s going to matter in the NBA context over the next five years. Curry? Curry’s going to continue to barrage from the arc, and make passes in an offense-happy system, and play hard and impressively and probably not learn anything he needs to about defense. That’s not his fault, that’s just who drafted him.

But Evans’ season feels like the chapter of something important, with gravitas, while Curry’s is like a well-formed poem in a student literary magazine. There’s talent there, but it’s still going to end up in the attic.

(Now Curry will drop 50 on the Blazers tonight or something. Book it.)