Myles Turner Understands The Indiana Pacers Have To Consider The Risk Of Losing Him For Nothing

Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner spent the entire NBA offseason near the center of trade speculation. But that’s nothing new for the 26-year old center.

Dating back to the 2019-20 season — the first campaign that Turner started alongside Domantas Sabonis in Indiana’s frontcourt — Turner has been in trade chatter at essentially every part of the NBA calendar where trades are discussed. Near the trade deadline, around the draft, and early in free agency each year, Turner’s name appears in reports. Even in December of 2021, when the Pacers met with their key players and informed them they may change directions, Turner was being discussed as a trade candidate.

Talk is just talk, and that’s all it ended up being in the past despite a few trades getting close to occurring. But this season is different. This year, Turner is on an expiring contract, meaning that if Indiana doesn’t deal him before the end of the 2022-23 campaign, he could leave the franchise in free agency.

That reality makes a Turner trade more plausible this season, and the 2015 lottery pick is more than aware of that fact. “Coming into a contract year as well, you can’t lose me for anything (nothing). They can’t have the notion of me playing out this year, they don’t trade me, and it’s like ‘okay, say free agency comes around and I don’t re-sign here’,” Turner said on the most recent episode of The Woj Pod. The Pacers starting center discussed trades and rumors with Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN for the opening nine minutes of the episode. “Let’s just be real in that that’s just bad on the organization.”

Turner is fresh off of his best game of the season, one in which he scored 27 points, grabbed ten rebounds, and blocked five shots. He is playing more at the center spot on offense this season now that Sabonis is in Sacramento, which means he is more involved in actions around the ball. It’s very early in the year, but Turner is averaging nearly 12 more touches per game this season than he did in 2021-22. His role is bigger, which is something he has wanted in the past.

But it still makes sense for Indiana to consider moving him. If the Pacers don’t trade the defensive stopper and then he signs with another team in free agency, the blue and gold will have lost a valuable piece for nothing. For a franchise that has a new mentality about team building and has stated that they are entering a new era, they can’t lose pieces with no return.

“If they do trade me, and they do get assets for me coming along, they’re doing what’s best for them and just looking out for, doing what they’re paid to do,” Turner said on the podcast. “There’s no hard feelings with that.”

The University of Texas product is in the final year of a contract he signed in 2018. He has a $18 million cap hit this season and could have his contract extended by the Pacers at any time prior to free agency.

But it’s a business, and as much as Turner knows what the Pacers need to consider with trades, he also knows what he has to consider for his own future. Michael Scotto of HoopsHype reported in the offseason that Turner is going to want a raise next summer, so unless he wants to lock himself into staying in Indianapolis now, he has no need to sign an extension. Any extension offer Indiana could send to Turner could also be presented as a normal contract offer in free agency, but in free agency, other teams can also offer the big man a deal. Even if Turner is considering staying with the Pacers, it would be smart for him to wait until free agency to ink a new deal. He will have more options.

But if it’s smarter for Turner to wait on his next contract, then it’s smarter for the Pacers to move on from him in a deal before his contract expires. And Turner clearly understands all that.

“I completely understand that I’ve grown up in Indiana, I’ve been here since I was 19 years old. And of course there’s some emotional attachment to it,” he said on The Woj Pod. “But when it comes to this business, when it comes to just business in general, you have to try and cut those emotional ties.”

The Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Lakers were the two teams most commonly linked to Turner in the offseason, though the Phoenix chatter subsided after the Pacers attempted to sign restricted free agent Deandre Ayton to a contract. The Lakers rumors, meanwhile, never went away and lasted until training camp.

Those reports involved the Pacers sending Turner to LA along with Indiana guard Buddy Hield for Lakers point guard Russell Westbrook. With huge salaries involved and Los Angeles not possessing many tradable assets, a deal would be difficult to negotiate.

If a deal were to go down, it would likely involve a combination of those three players as well as one or two Lakers first round draft picks, with pick protections being a matter of negotiation. That was the rumored deal during the offseason, though it isn’t clear if any formal offers were actually made.

Wojnarowski asked Turner directly if the center would do the deal with two picks if he was the Lakers. “When you look at this business of the league and knowing the landscape of the league, you have to go off your future. We all know picks are so valuable in this league,” Turner said. “Someone like myself, I’m heading into the last year of my deal. You want to make sure you’re getting a return for your assets, right? So if I’m the Lakers, I take a very hard look at this with the position that you’re in.” The Lakers are currently 1-5 while the Pacers are 3-4.

“As far as pulling the trigger, I get paid to shoot, not to make these calls. I couldn’t answer that,” Turner added.

In the absence of a contract extension agreement between Turner and the Pacers, this topic will remain relevant until either a deal happens or the trade deadline passes in February. The Pacers, and their new, longer-term based approach, would be smart to think in the way that Turner described — without any assurance that he will stick around beyond this season, they have to deal him for assets.

Whether that means making a trade with the Lakers or a different franchise will depend on what trade offers the team ultimately receives. But Myles Turner and the Indiana Pacers are both keenly aware of their current situation, and it will be a constantly discussed topic over the next few months.