3 goals for Myles Turner in his 2019-20 Indiana Pacers campaign
By Ryan Eggers
Becoming the alpha dog on offense
As Matthew Jay put it in our Alpha Dog series, Turner has a huge opportunity in the wake of Victor Oladipo‘s absence for the first half of the season. There’s no clear No. 2 on offense right now with the departure of Bojan Bogdanovic, and pretty much every player in the starting lineup could find themselves in that role.
So why not Turner? Thinking back to the three-point dilemma, Turner’s offensive woes are hardly a matter of skill, but rather of circumstance. Turner can get buckets like any other stretch big in the league, he just doesn’t get the volume of other elite stretch bigs. Once again, you can chalk this up to coaching, but at a certain level Turner isn’t getting after it enough when the ball is in his hands.
Fellow 2015 draftees Karl-Anthony Towns and Kristaps Porzingis take 17, 18 shots a game for their respective teams. Turner put up 10.5 last season, just a smidge under his career high. If he wants to evolve into a player that is as proficient on offense as he is on defense, he has to increase volume.
He’s spent the last four years honing his efficiency, and the numbers show that work. But being able to knock down shots doesn’t matter if you’re not taking shots. Between just Oladipo, Bogdanovic, and Young’s absence, 39.7 field goal attempts have opened up in the starting lineup (at least in the first half of the year). Surely Jeremy Lamb, T.J. Warren, and Malcolm Brogdon will eat some of those up, not to mention Sabonis’ upgrade to the starting five — but Turner has to find a way to grab five or six more of those attempts. Especially from the perimeter.
Next. Alpha Dog: Myles Turner becomes Indiana's secret weapon on offense. dark
Myles Turner has his work cut out for him this year, but he’s shown that he has the skills in place to take the next step. Most of his improvements must come from the offensive end, where he needs to be more assertive while also finding a way to make TurBonis work. Much of the new-look Indiana Pacers rides on Turner being able to make these changes, so we’ll have to wait and see what the $20 million man cooks up in 2019-20.