Myles Turner, Joe Young Having Impressive Week at the Orlando Summer League
By Ben Gibson
In a way the NBA’s summer leagues are something like the show “Whose Line Is it Anyway?”: The league where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter. It doesn’t really matter that the Indiana Pacers team got their first win of the summer with a 91-85 victory over the Orlando (Blue) squad. What matters is seeing young players start to put together their game against near-NBA level competition.
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It doesn’t hurt that the Pacers got the win, but seeing second-round pick Joe Young drop 28 points in the game matters more to both his and Indiana’s future. Young went 9 of 17 from the field and 5 of 9 from 3-point range to lead all scorers. That isn’t a surprise considering Young is second in scoring in the Orlando League with 20.7 points a game while Myles Turner is right behind him with 18.7 points a game. Turner sat out Thursday’s game to rest but he’s been impressing plenty already.
While Young has shown offensively he’s more than capable by making 52.4% of his shots, he has impressed with his efforts on defense as well. That’s something that wasn’t expected coming into Summer League. Indiana Pacers coaches Dan Burke and Frank Vogel
, as well as president Larry Bird according to Fran Blinebury of NBA.com.
"“We don’t want to go helter-skelter,” Burke said. “But get it up quick and get into our stuff quick. Look to score in the first eight seconds. If you don’t, then you’ve got to score in the last eight seconds and execute. Joe’s that kind of guy.“I think we’ve had good defensive teams. So we need more stops and continue to get those stops and shots and runs. Joe’s about the best I’ve seen that we’ve had in the last couple of years in getting it up the court. C.J. Watson wasn’t really a push guy like that. Donald Sloan wasn’t that fast. And George Hill can be fast, but he’s more comfortable just getting up at a decent tempo. He’s going to be an interesting player to watch. Joe’s fast, aggressive, confident.”"
Young has certainly impressed and likely has earned himself a spot on the roster, but Turner has looked like he’s been working just as hard to make an impact early like he hoped. The big man out of Texas been playing better than some expected on the defensive end and hasn’t looked stiff like some feared. There were questions about how well he could run up and down the court but he’s dismissed those concerns so far as he’s averaging 16.5 points, 8.5 boards and 4.5 blocks per game.
Scouts: "Myles Turner has doesn't run fluidly"
— Tim Donahue (@TimDonahueZ) July 4, 2015
Ppl who have watched Roy Hibbert for 7 years, "Myles Turner runs like a gazelle."
Defense doesn’t seem to be an issue as Turner is blocking shots at a rate of 4.3 per a game to lead the Orlando Summer League while his rebounding puts him in fourth with 8.3 a game. Turner also impressed with the accuracy of his shooting, making just over 60% of his shots so far. It won’t be nearly that easy once he faces NBA-level competition, but you want to see dominating performances against equal to lesser competition.
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That can’t be said even for some of the Pacers who have seen Summer League action this year. While Shayne Whittington averaged 12 points and 6.5 rebounds per game in two outings, Solomon Hill didn’t do much to change perceptions of his offensive woes with only 4.7 points per a game in his 3 appearances.
Going back to last year’s Summer League, we saw Donald Sloan turn in an impressive resume from Orlando with 18.5 points a game. Injury forced him into more action than what the Pacers planned, but he averaged 7.8 points a game in 53 appearances in the regular season. One can hope both Turner and Young can find ways to contribute like Sloan did when the games start to count.
.@JoeyBuckets3 sat down with our NBA TV crew following his big game against the Magic Blue (28 pts) #NBASummer http://t.co/QXnF43sgIa
— NBA TV (@NBATV) July 9, 2015
For both rookies it looks like they have taken advantage of the few days they have to impress Larry and Frank. We’ll see how well they handle NBA competition when October rolls around but for now we can enjoy the fact they look better than advertised.