Myles Turner is going to need a new bank account

As we continue to talk about the new face of the Pacers during Myles Turner week, Tony East has a breakdown of something off the court that makes Myles Turner more valuable: his low salary

Quincy Acy, Ish Smith, Kyle Singler, Ed Davis, and Malcolm Delaney. What do all of these players have in common with Myles Turner?

They are all the eighth highest paid player on their teams. The eighth highest paid player on an NBA team tends to be a rotation player, but for the Pacers, this player is also their best one.

Turner is due to make only $2,569,920 next season, a low amount given the landscape of NBA player salaries. That is great value for a contributor that produces over 14 points and seven rebounds a game as a 21-year-old. His stats from last season put him into an elite group of players.

Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 8/8/2017.

Besides Turner and the similarly young Karl-Anthony Towns, every player on this list is making the max next season. Myles Turner is making $2.5 million.

So yeah, his contract is a steal. The rookie scale is really helping out the Pacers here, and will continue to do so over the life of Turner’s contract, which spans over the next two seasons.

How Turner’s salary helps the Indiana Pacers

Creating a trend line between NBA Math’s asset score and the salary of every NBA player, I created a salary formula that states what a player should be paid based on how much of an asset to a team he is. Myles Turner’s age and production make him worth approximately $31 million per season going forward (note: this is above his maximum salary, but the formula ignores that rule). The $28.5 million dollar difference between what Turner should make and what he is making creates quite a difference in the Pacers cap sheet.

That difference is huge for the front office.

28.5 million dollars this summer allowed the Pacers to get Bojan Bogdanovic, Darren Collison, AND Corey Joseph. Myles Turner will be cheap for one more offseason as well, so if the Pacers want to build a contender around him, next summer is their best opportunity.

The Pacers have the ability to get anywhere from $14 million to $64 million in cap space next summer. If Myles Turner was making 31 million, that number would be significantly lower, or even 0, and the team would be unable to sign many other players to contracts.

Where things get good for Turner

Next summer is where Myles Turner’s money situation becomes interesting for himself, too. At that time, he becomes designated rookie extension eligible, and the Pacers would be smart to attempt to sign him to that. Thankfully for the front office, such an extension does not require that the team have cap space (though they likely will anyway) so this transaction could occur anytime next off-season.

The designated rookie extension would lock up Myles Turner for any amount of money up to 25 percent of the cap and any amount of years up to five. What the designated rookie extension can offer that a normal contract cannot is incentives to get up to a higher salary.

The extension would kick in as soon as his rookie deal is over (after the 2018-19 NBA season). If he signs it with no incentives, he would be signing a deal worth any value up to five years, about $156.6 million. On July 1, 2019, the contract would kick in and Myles Turner would count against the Pacers cap for $27 million that season.

Incentives will make the extension negotiation more interesting. Normally, because Myles Turner has less than six years of NBA experience, he is eligible for a maximum of 25 percent of the salary cap with 8 percent raises. However, like the designated player extension, the Pacers can put in qualifiers into Myles Turner’s contract that allows him to receive a higher percentage of the cap.

These qualifiers can be whatever is negotiated by Turner’s agent, Andy Miller, and the Pacers. It is impossible to guess what these incentives will be, but my rough guess would be something like — 27 percent of the max eligible if Turner makes an All-Star team, 28 percent of the max eligible if he qualifies for the All-NBA second or third team, 29 percent of the max if he makes all NBA first team, and 30 percent of the max if he is Defensive Player of the year or MVP. If none of these happen, Turner will still get a lot of money from the team.

Myles Turner’s future

If Turner does not sign an extension, then two years from now you can expect him to get the max anyway. He is the face of the franchise and already an excellent player at his age, so anything less than the max would be an insulting offer from the Pacers.

Considering he is worth $31 million, signing him to the max is still surplus value for Indiana. Being 21 years-old and already a top player at his position will allow Tuner to constantly add surplus value to the Pacers roster, and will allow him to be paid very fruitfully.

Next: A statistical analysis of the Myles Turner era

In the end, as Turner continues to grow his basketball skills, he will also need to grow his wallet.