Myles Turner is a beacon of his own improvement (Patreon)

(My work at Basketball, She Wrote is typically paywalled. This article, as a synopsis of what's changed for Myles Turner through the lens of two possessions separated by four years, is available as a free trial. If you're new here and want to support independent writing about actual basketball, please consider subscribing and/or sharing it around. Alright, on to the words about the Pacers.)

By: Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper  

The date is December 22, 2019 and the Pacers are playing on the road against the Bucks, trailing 59-54 with under 10 seconds to play in the second quarter. The league wouldn't shutdown as a result of the global pandemic for another three months, and T.J. Warren had yet to transform into the darling of the seeding games; however, on this particular possession, the buttery mid-range scorer was dabbling in what would eventually be with him playing at the four -- just as he did out of necessity at the bubble campus in Orlando. As a result, Myles Turner is the only big on the floor. 

That means he isn't being stashed in the corner, with Domantas Sabonis at the "center" of the action, and he isn't being cross-matched, with the opposing big guarding Thaddeus Young, rather than venturing out to the perimeter, as so often happened in past seasons. Instead, he has the five-spot all to himself, operating as the screener, while being defended by Brook Lopez -- fours years before the same match-up would occur in Las Vegas under very different circumstances and with a very different outcome. At a glance, the two possessions, separated by multiple coaching changes and only one carryover as far as on-court personnel, seem as though they have a lot in common. In both cases, the Pacers are running middle pick-and-roll with the screen being a few steps outside the three-point line. Meanwhile, Lopez is guarding Turner and no one else has a foot in the paint, but that's where the similarities mostly stop -- for both teams. 

In 2019, the Pacers didn't get into the meat of the play until late in the clock, whereas the current iteration of the team is already situated as soon as the ball crosses half-court. To be fair, that makes sense given the context of the two respective games. After all, the 2019-20 team had reason to leave Milwaukee with crumbs at the end of the half, but Lopez obviously had more opportunity to be set as a result. Rather than backpedaling to protect the rim in transition and then having to come up out of the paint to defend the screen, he's already up to a touch in his hunched stance, positioned to start his retreat. Still, the quicker entry into the offense by comparison to the more methodical, plodding days of yore, also has the effect of forcing a team to guard the team as opposed to designated or preferred assignments, which can lead to unfavorable positioning. For example, it's going to matter that Lopez is pointing for Damian Lillard to match-up with Aaron Nesmith. 

To understand why, look at the direction of the ball. Malcolm Brogdon is driving toward the single side of the floor, trying to find an angle to the rim with Middleton anchored to Warren in the corner. 

By comparison, Tyrese Haliburton is attacking the full-side, where Middleton has to pinch-in to protect against the pull-up three with Lopez in drop while also accounting for Buddy Hield. 

That alone is notable, because there have been match-ups against other teams this season in which the Bucks have jump-switched onto the ball from that same spot, as Malik Beasley does here with Middleton peeling off to the perimeter. 

Even with Haliburton leading the league in points per chance out of ball screens, minimum 200 picks, Middleton is still clinging to Hield -- to the point of completely turning his back to the ball.

Meanwhile, back in the past, Brogdon is effectively playing at one speed, dribbling off the pick into what was once Milwaukee's no-fly zone. During that season, the Bucks allowed the lowest percentage of opponent shots at the rim and the lowest conversion rate on said attempts, according to Cleaning the Glass. This is a snap-shot of how they managed to finish first in both categories. Jrue Holiday wasn't in the fold yet to impact passing angles at the point of attack, but Donte DiVicenzo was still nipping at Brogdon's heels at the same time as Lopez was taking up space at the rim with Giannis Antetokounmpo lurking right behind him in the shadows. Taken altogether, the Bucks are basically saying, "nope."

At present, no one on the floor for Milwaukee is going to slither over screens to stay attached to Haliburton's hip in that same manner. To that point, Lillard is being relegated away from the ball for good reason (i.e. he doesn't so much slither as shrivel), but the fact that Lopez pointed for him to take Nesmith, means that he's the player in nearest position to bother the pocket pass and/or provide help behind the action and he doesn't move a muscle. 

Again, that's quite a bit different from the looming silhouette of Giannis, as well as the sinking feeling emoted by George Hill. Even so, Haliburton doesn't just put the pedal to the metal. He surveys, eyeing the perimeter with his outside-in passing progression, while waiting for Turner to put himself in the passing window. And there's the thing: Turner surely benefits from being spoon fed by Haliburton (who wouldn't?), but he's also improved at rolling in tandem with the ball when it wasn't always a guarantee that he would even roll, let alone make himself available as the roll-man.

According to Second Spectrum, Turner rolled on 24.2 picks per 100 possessions during his 2019-20 campaign when he was the lone center on the floor, with the Pacers scoring 0.993 points per chance. This season, he's rolling on 35.4 picks per 100 possessions, yielding 1.143 points per chance. As a tandem, of the 74 combinations that have at least 100 actions, Haliburton and Turner's picks rank third in points per chance (1.22), trailing only Trae Young-Jalen Johnson (1.41) and the championship-caliber duo of Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray (1.22), both of which are pairings that have yet to log even a third of the volume that has been amassed by Indiana's core partnership.

Granted, Milwaukee's defense obviously isn't as stiff as it once was, but Turner also just kept taking advantage, including when the assignments were mixed around with Dame "defending" on ball and Giannis on the back-side, opting to prioritize the player shaking up from the corner as opposed to cluttering the pass or sliding over to clean up the mess. This is like watching an all-day marathon of the same movie. Catch, step, and dunk, followed by another round of catch, step, and dunk.

In the first half, the Bucks tried switching the pick-and-roll with Lopez in the far corner, but with Turner and Hield both slipping out of the action in opposite directions, Haliburton exploited the confused coverage from the air, demonstrating once again why jump passes are good now in assisting his big man to play big at the rim -- up and through the chest of Lopez's rotation. 

In the past, when those types of swaps occurred, Turner would've been marginalized to orbiting around the perimeter, not rumbling down the lane to draw an extra defender from the perimeter.

Of course, by the end of the fourth quarter, Haliburton Time took over for Dame Time, as he taught a second-straight contender the hard lesson that is switching out against him in crunch-time without blitzing, but the risk of blitzing is also chancier when Turner is playing like this in this offense with this spacing. That wasn't the case four years ago, even when he was at solo five, but in this game against this defense and with this point guard, he scored 15 points as the screener, marking the most since the prior win over Milwaukee (16), with the majority being tallied with him either moving toward or drawing contact at the rim. All of which is to say that, in addition to his defense, which was stronger as far as his shot prevention when he wasn't getting left alone with Giannis in space, Turner wasn't just a testament to the perks of playing with Haliburton. In the city of flashing, electric lights, he was also a beacon, when compared to flashbacks from his past, of his own improvement.