Unfortunately in today’s NBA, marketing means as much to winning awards as actual play on the basketball court. Last year, Kevin Love had his own “glass cleaner” infomercial in order to get some Rookie of the Year recognition. Amare Stoudemire is teaming up with David Spade in order to garner some All-Star votes. And the Bucks are going to have to do some serious marketing to get Andrew Bogut on one of the All-Defensive teams even though he’s been one of the best deterrents in the middle this year.

With that said, the fervor for guys like Stephen Curry, Brandon Jennings and Darren Collison is growing as they put up amazing stats on bad teams (Curry) and good stats on teams with playoff hopes (Jennings and Collison). For some reason, what gets lost in the entire run-around of figuring out the Rookie of the Year award is that Tyreke Evans has been this good and a force of nature in the NBA at a historical pace ALL SEASON LONG. Tyreke Evans has been the best rookie for the entire campaign.

Jennings was hot early as he battled Tyreke for top rookie honors in the first month. Since January, Stephen Curry has been on fire and trying to wrestle away the honor of being the top rookie from Tyreke Evans. And since Chris Paul went down, Darren Collison has tried to do the same thing – take away ROY from Tyreke Evans. While all of the rookies I just mentioned have been great in their own way at different points of the season here’s the underlying point that everyone outside of Sacramento seems to be missing…

TYREKE EVANS HAS BEEN THERE ALL FREAKING SEASON!!!!

Because of this incomprehensible confusion around the NBA, the Kings need to get in on this action of pumping up their own guy so that people don’t forget who has been doing this rookie thing better than everybody else.

So at the Raptors game on March 10th, they’re holding a rally to remind people that Tyreke Evans is the only choice for Rookie of the Year.

As Sacramento rallies to show its support for Tyreke Evans for Rookie of the Year on March 10, 13 lucky Kings fans will win two lower level tickets to the ‘Rally for RekeROY’ game, a Cache Creek ‘Rally for RekeROY’ T-shirt autographed by Evans and the opportunity to ‘win the spotlight on court’ during the spectacular pregame special effects show.

Fans can enter to win the ‘Rally for RekeROY’ contest by texting the word “Rally” to 69866 or visiting StandwithTyreke.com by noon on Tuesday, March 9.

When the Kings have celebrated certain things at games this year (Veterans, Tyreke’s Rookie of the Month awards, etc.) it’s been a very well done celebration with great video work on the boards and great presentations on the court. I would assume with making this about a celebration of the historical rookie season that Tyreke Evans is attempting the Kings will pull out all of the stops in making this a fun night.

Link from Kings Connect

From the Kings: Tyreke Evans and Omri Casspi have been named to the Rookie Team for next month’s All-Star festivities in Dallas.

Sacramento Kings rookies Tyreke Evans and Omri Casspi were selected to the 2010 T-Mobile Rookie Challenge & Youth Jam to be held on Friday, February 12 in Dallas during NBA All-Star 2010. The participants in the T-Mobile Rookie Challenge & Youth Jam were selected by the NBA’s assistant coaches, with each team submitting one ballot.

The last time a Kings player participated in the NBA All-Star Weekend was in 2004 when Brad Miller and Peja Stojakovic were members of the Western Conference All-Star team. Stojakovic also was a 3-Point Shootout participant that year, finishing second. Evans and Casspi become the seventh and eighth Kings players to play in the Rookie Challenge, joining Brian Grant and Michael Smith (1995), Tyus Edney (1996), Michael Stewart (1998), Jason Williams (2000), and Hedo Turkoglu (2002).

Really happy for Omri to get recognized by the coaches around the league here. He’s been one of the best rookies this season and while we knew that, it doesn’t necessarily mean that everybody else knew it. Now, let’s see if Omri can find his way into the Three-Point Shootout.

From the Kings Media Release:

Sacramento Kings guard Tyreke Evans was named Western Conference T-Mobile Rookie of the Month for games in December. Evans becomes the first Kings player to win the award in consecutive months and joins Lionel Simmons (December 1990 and February 1991) as the only Kings rookies to win the award twice.

This means he’s won two out of two Western Conference Rookie of the Month awards. I’m going to boldly proclaim now that he’ll win four more of these. And then the Rookie of the Year for the entire NBA.

Enjoy these next four months, Kings fans. He’s the best rookie you’ve ever had.

From the Sacramento Kings Media Release:

Sacramento Kings guard Tyreke Evans was named Western Conference Rookie of the Month for games played from the start of the season (Oct. 27) through November. Evans is averaging 18.8 points (44.6 FG%, 32.3 3pt%, 79.0 FT%), 5.0 rebounds, 4.7 assists, 1.33 steals, and 36.1 minutes per game in starting all 15 games he has played in this season. He leads the Kings in assists and is second in scoring. Evans becomes only the third Kings player to be named Rookie of the Month, joining Brian Grant (January 1995) and Lionel Simmons (December 1990 and February 1991).