Myles Turner Will Change The Way We Evaluate Pre-Draft Bigs

Myles Turner and the Indiana Pacers are out of the playoffs, but the 20 year-old’s impact on a playoff team may have changed we scout predraft bigs.

As a fan, we sometimes forget professional sports are all billion-dollar businesses.  And as an entrepreneurial entity, they must collectively act and make decisions with the sole intent of maximizing their stakeholders’ equity.

Thus, when taking a macro approach in evaluating the current landscape of professional sports — and in particular, major North American sports — it becomes blatantly rational as to why both the NFL and the NBA has taken the parallel steps to procreate a user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing product.

More explicitly, both conglomerates have taken significant strides in modifying the rules of the game to favor the offense — because, after all, touchdowns and dunks are what put butts in seats and eyes on televisions (not to mention, league passes on credit card bills).

Such steps have catapulted the exposure and perceived significance of certain positions that dominate the pace of play — i.e., quarterbacks in football and point guards in basketball — while lessening the reliance on traditionally dominant positions that halt the artistic taste of the sport, such as running backs in football and centers in basketball.

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The evolution of the game, unsullied or not, have changed the way teams draft and evaluate players.  We saw it last week in the NFL Draft, when drafting a running back in the first round was seen as “a wasted pick.”

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The philosophical change in drafting has also trickled into the NBA. Before 2008, the only point guards to have been selected No. 1 overall were Magic Johnson in 1979 and Allen Iverson in 1996 (if you consider him as a lead guard).  Post-2008, however, we’ve seen three floor generals picked No. 1 in Derrick Rose (2008), John Wall (2010) and Kyrie Irving (2011).

The big men who have been drafted first in this era, namely, Anthony Davis and Karl-Anthony Towns, have strayed away from the conventional characteristics of the traditional big man.  While they possess elite size and length, they have the skill set of a small forward in the 1980s and 1990s.

But versatility is the now the name of the game. Offenses have never been more spaced and the importance of having bigs that can stretch the floor, in addition to doing traditional big man things (like rebound and block shots), are valued at a premium.

This brings us to Myles Turner.

Watching him over the second half of the season and now in the playoffs, you would’ve guessed this gangly 20-year old must have been a top-three pick.  Not only does he possess a feathery outside touch offensively, he hustles his ass off and has unbelievable shot-blocking instincts defensively.

Does he get a little lost on his pick-and-roll coverages from time to time?  Yes, but so does every other teenage big man in the history of the game.

However, when you search his name up on DraftExpress, it tells you the Indiana Pacers had actually stolen him with the 11th overall pick of the 2015 NBA Draft.

How can this be?  The kid is a physical marvel at 6-foot-11 with a 7-foot-4 wingspan and 9-foot-4 standing reach.  He has a great frame and broad shoulders, insinuating his future ability to gain functional strength.

Simply put, Myles Turner oozes with potential.

When you dig a tad bit deeper, though, you’d find Turner had barely averaged more than 10 points during his lone season in college; and despite his impressive per minute rebounding and shot-blocking numbers, his awkward running gait scared off many lottery-bound teams in rolling the dice on the Bedford, Texas, native.

The truth is the NBA Draft is never going to be an exact science.  In every single draft, no matter the sport, you are going to have your busts and your overachievers, fairly or unfairly determined antecedently based on the position they were drafted in.

Looking ahead to this year’s draft, you have a handful of guys who share similar physical attributes, skill sets and humbling backstories as Turner.

In particular, draft hopefuls Dragan Bender, Skal Labissiere, Zhou Qi and Thon Maker are all sky-scraping pterodactyls with the ability to hit a face-up jumper from 20 feet out.

Much like Turner, they are also billed with the capacity and the agility to defend out on the perimeter in a pinch — a critical skill in today’s pick-and-roll heavy league — while possessing the length and/or athleticism needed to protect the rim.

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However, all four of the highly touted big men head into the draft with colossal question marks.

Bender and Labissiere severely underperformed this season while adjusting to a higher level of play.  Meanwhile, Maker and Zhou are the mystery men of the draft, in that it’s exceedingly difficult to compartmentalize the scouting of their play based on the questionable competition they have faced over the last couple of years.

But hopefully, with Myles Turner serving as a blueprint of sorts, teams can overlook the underwhelming stats and unsettling question marks, and focus on the skills that are translatable, how their physical profile will impact the game, and just how devastating of a two-way force they can potentially become, in evaluating the future big men of the 2016 NBA Draft.