USA TODAY International Edition
Turner gives Pacers nice scoring boost
But stats suggest he isn’t final piece to title puzzle
The Indiana Pacers made the biggest move at the trade deadline, acquiring Evan Turner from the Philadelphia 76ers for Danny Granger, who is playing under an expiring contract, and a secondround pick.
The deal gives the Pacers a healthy upgrade in bench scoring and a good backup option in case Lance Stephenson is too expensive to re- sign this summer, but talk of Indiana locking up the Eastern Conference with this move is greatly exaggerated.
Turner, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2010 draft, is having the best season of his career, putting up big numbers on a terrible Sixers team. But he’s never been an efficient scorer, and that hasn’t changed this season.
Turner’s true shooting percentage, a metric that factors free throws into a shooter’s efficiency, is a career- high 50.5%. But thanks to awful three- point shooting ( his clip from beyond the arc has dropped from a passable 36.5% last season to 28.8% this season), his effective field goal percentage ( which weights three- pointers higher than twopointers) is right in line with his career mark at 45.1%.
Turner’s offensive efficiency this season isn’t great, either. He’s scoring 98 points per 100 possessions, an improvement over last season’s mark but not close to elite. But Turner has never played for a team even close to as good as this season’s Pacers.
He was averaging 34.9 minutes a game for the Sixers as one of their only reliable scorers, making a career- high 6.6 field goals a game. He won’t have that kind of responsibility for Indiana.
Turner’s ability to stay on the floor also makes him a more reliable bench scoring option than Granger, who has struggled with knee problems all season. Granger has appeared in 29 games for the Pacers this season, looking like a shell of his former All- Star self and shooting 35.9% from the field. Turner’s youth and health give the Pacers an edge.
Still, it’s premature to say that this move greatly increases the Pacers’ title chances. They’re the best team in the Eastern Conference, and that’s unlikely to change, but Turner doesn’t move the needle enough to make them a clear favorite in a seven- game series vs. the Miami Heat.
What it does give them is another solid scoring option who could be re- signed for cheaper than Stephenson, although Stephenson is a far better player. Given that the Pacers were likely not going to re- sign Granger anyway, it was a good short- term move that didn’t cost much and has the potential to make them better.