Myles Turner has had a troublesome year overall. But there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to the team’s longest-tenured player.
Myles Turner‘s season with the Indiana Pacers could be described as turbulent. The young center, following a season where he led the league in blocks and flirted with the Defensive Player of the Year award, took a step back in points, rebounds, and assists per game in 2020 despite an increase in minutes.
There’s needed information to understand Turner’s season.
His partner in the frontcourt, Domantas Sabonis, was pushed into the starting lineup alongside Turner. These two players have extremely overlapping skillsets, which created some fit issues and adjustments for Turner.
Turner’s shot profile changed drastically, as did his role. Understanding that he had a hand in creating room for Sabonis to be so great this season is important.
How good was Myles Turner on offense in 2019-20?
On the surface, Myles Turner had a rough year on the offensive end. He scored less than he ever had before, despite taking a higher volume of higher point potential shots. His true shooting percentage dropped and he posted the worst offensive rebounding rate per 36 minutes of his career.
All of this needs to be contextualized, though. The Pacers completely revamped Turner’s role in the offensive system this year on account of wanting to roll Domantas Sabonis into the starting lineup. Sabonis and Turner have traditionally both done a bulk of their offensive work in the paint, so to amicably roll them both into the starting lineup the team needed to make adjustments.
Turner, having the more accurate 3-point shot, was the one asked to make the larger adjustment. He went from taking 25.1 percent of his shots beyond the arc last year to 44.3 percent this year, an extreme adjustment in shot profile, especially for a center.
He struggled. That should have been expected.
It’s important to note, though, that the spacing Turner provided by sacrificially giving up some of his at-the-rim scoring opportunities allowed Sabonis the space he needed to be an All-Star this season.
The offensive rebounding was bound to go down as well, and the fact that his per-36 offensive rebounds didn’t completely crater is impressive given that most of his time on the offensive end is spent out on the perimeter.
Ultimately, it’s hard to overlook the down year Turner had on the offensive end. He wasn’t stellar, and he struggled to lean into a new role.
That said, we need to apply some measure of reasonability here and view his efforts for what they were. He was selfless in taking on a new role for the betterment of the team, and the jarring change was rolled into his game with extremely minimal bumps in the road.
How good was Myles Turner on defense in 2019-20?
One phrase: As good as ever.
Turner is one of the league’s best rim protectors and is the foundation of the Pacers seventh-best defense in the NBA. Within six feet of the rim, Turner forces opponents to shoot 10.8 percent worse than they normally do, forcing those shots to fall at a rate just a tad above 50 percent.
This is good, and it doesn’t even take into account the numerous shots per night that opponents are convinced to not take at all because of Turner’s presence in the paint.
He has a keen awareness for where to be and when, and is an extremely intelligent defender that communicates with his teammates to time switches perfectly.
Turner is the kind of defender every team wishes they had at center.
How good was Myles Turner overall in 2019-20?
Myles Turner had a down year, no way around saying that. Though he was solid on the defensive end as we have come to expect from him, his offensive game struggled as he leaned into a completely new role.
While there’s reason to appreciate the spacing he provided, his shooting wasn’t very efficient, and the struggles we saw from him this year should have been expected to a degree. They are still struggles nonetheless, and should be graded as such.