The Indiana Pacers are trying to make tall work in a league that has made small trendy. The Domantas Sabonis and Myles Turner frontcourt experiment has gone on for some time now and with mixed results.
In a perfect world, the two complement each other perfectly and give the Pacers the size to defend and threaten some of the league’s most skilled teams. Turner’s offensive game has long contained a 3-point shot threat that allows Sabonis to have space to work in the interior, and Sabonis has grown year after year to improve his shooting as well, taking a career-high 2.4 3-point attempts this year and making them at a respectable 36.4 percent rate.
Sabonis boasts decent defense, but his game is largely offensive. Growing into a Nikola Jokic-esque role this year, he serves as the center point for the Pacers offense. The ball goes through him. In fact, Sabonis ranks second in touches in the league (104.5) to Jokic (104.9).
Turner’s role is much less glamorous, given that his best skillset is his defense. An underrated defender for years now, Turner keeps up with the best of the league’s rim protectors, and his defensive importance has been talked about by plenty of Pacers writers in the past.
It’s difficult to concretely determine how impactful Turner’s defense is, and it is often not until that player leaves the court that the true impact is realized. That much was true and has been made true over the last two games in which Turner didn’t play.
The Indiana Pacers are struggling in a big way defensively without Myles Turner
Turner, who is day-to-day due to an avulsion fracture that won’t require surgery, has missed the last two games. The Pacers have missed him sorely, losing by 33 to the Clippers and by 12 to the Mavericks.
The Pacers gave up 56 points in the paint against LA and 48 against the Mavericks. For context, the worst surrendered points in the paint team is the Sacramento Kings, which give up 52.4 points per game.
Usually, it’s the Pacers scoring in droves in the painted area, as they lead the league with 55.6 points in the paint per game, but Turner’s absence has pulled their defensive foundation out from under them and given teams a means to score with ease.
No player exposed this more than Kristaps Porzingis did on Wednesday night. The Pacers sent Sabonis up to double Luka Doncic early in the contest, which often left Porzingis free and open. The Pacers later strategized by putting Justin Holiday, a good defender, in to guard Porzingis, but he wasn’t a match for the extremely long and athletic Porzingis.
When you look at this clip it’s clear — The Pacers could have used someone like Turner to lock this guy up:
The hope should be that Sabonis can someday handle that defensive duty as well and continue growing on that end, but especially against a team like the Mavericks where they have two potent offensive players in Doncic and Porzingis to worry about, Turner’s defensive importance becomes all too clear.
Porzingis ended up with 27 points on Wednesday.
Turner’s impact goes far beyond blocked shots, though his STOCKS (blocks+steals, 5.7, and Turner leads the league in blocks per game) have been a major part of his defensive game this year, and start to shape the case for his Defensive Player of the Year campaign.
As any strong fulcrum defender does, Turner also does a great job of dissuading opponents from even coming near the paint to shoot against him.
Turner is defending 16.3 shots per game, forcing opponents to make 40.8 percent of them (8.1 percent worse than usual). Of players that defend at least 10 shots per game and have played more than one game, only Jakob Poeltl has a better FG% differential.
Turner is also top-4 in the first batch of defensive box plus/minus released by Basketball-Reference, in a crowd with Marc Gasol, Bam Adebayo, Anthony Davis, Ben Simmons, and Draymond Green, who all post a DBPM of 2.0 or better along with Turner (2.8). These numbers are heavily infleunced by trends that will smooth out over time, but it’s still great company and a strong early indicator of Turner’s defensive performance.
The defensive player of the year race is often the most uncertain award race of the year. Soon, the waters will get a little bit clearer as more games are played on who is deserving of this award. But if the last two games have shown us anything, it’s that Myles Turner should be mentioned and that he’s an integral part of this team’s defensive success.