Jeremy Evans’ great idea in 2013 was to combine his great passions, mix them and take them to the most glittering of the stage, that of the 2013 NBA All-Star Game. A year earlier he had won the dunk contest by jumping over his teammate with the Utah Jazz, Gordon Hayward, and dunking two basketballs at the same time. Previously, there had been players capable of dunking two balls or jumping over a teammate. But the two things together had never been done before by anyone. In 2013 Evans decided to jump over his effigy, the caricature that he himself had painted. Basketball and art. These are his two passions. “A couple of Utah Jazz staff members helped me out, it was a privilege to showcase my art. It wasn’t the best paint I’ve ever done, but being able to showcase on that stage that I was an artist was important.”
When he played at Western Kentucky, a mid-major college that did not guarantee the necessary exposure, according to his then coach Darrin Horn no one thought Jeremy Evans could become an NBA player except … Jeremy Evans. After four years with the Hilltoppers, Evans had become the college’s all-time best shot-blocker, but he was at most a 10-point-per-game scorer in his senior year. Evans was instead chosen in the second round of the 2010 NBA draft by Utah, he was 55th player selected. “Actually, since I was a child, I have seen myself playing in the NBA, especially for how my mother has given me confidence in my abilities, so from the first day I always believed that I would make it. When I was chosen, wow, words cannot explain what I felt. Everyone grows up waiting for that moment, it was like a dream come true.”
With the Jazz, Evans stayed for five years, he became a fan-favorite player: “I think it was a matter of character, of being a professional. It is about how you act on and off the court, how you interact with the fans. They are there to make the game exciting, you have to give something back, play hard, compete, win games.” In 2012, he won the slam dunk contest: “Not many players can get in the slam dunk contest and for me, even winning it was amazing. Getting up to the level of the great players who won it, I think of Vince Carter to name one, seeing those players doing their thing and then being able to do like them is the greatest feeling ever.” Then in 2013, he finished in the second place behind Terrence Ross, with the famous dunk that showed the world not only his insane athleticism, but also his skills as an artist. “I started when I was probably five years old – he says -, it’s something I never stopped doing, thanks to my mother and the confidence she had in me. She told me how a good job I was doing, at a time when I probably wasn’t that good, but I continued through college, through my NBA career and still do it now. I love it and when I’m done playing basketball that’s exactly what I want to do.”
But at this time there is an eleventh season as a professional to experience, the third in the EuroLeague where he has played at an excellent level, first at Darussafaka and then in Khimki. What can it bring to the table for Olimpia? “Energy, of course, and I will go out to fight and mainly help with defense, make some blocks, steal some balls, make some stops, and try to be the biggest presence I can be at both ends of the floor.”
