Indiana Pacers: Can Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis play together?

The Indiana Pacers have two talented big men in Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis, but the team’s fanbase is questioning whether the pair can be an effective tandem.

The Indiana Pacers are fortunate to have two very young and very talented frontcourt players in Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis. However, Pacers Nation is not too sure these two 6’11” players are compatible.

There has been a lot of talk among Pacers fans recently regarding the pairing of Turner and Sabonis — many observers feel that they do not play well together and one of them may need to be traded at some point.

First, let’s take a look at Turner and Sabonis in terms of their skill-sets. In general, Myles Turner is more of a finesse player, while Domantas Sabonis is a banger who does a lot of the dirty work around the basket for Indiana.

Turner is a better outside shooter than Sabonis, he’s more athletic and he’s a superior shot-blocker. However, Sabonis does offer advantages when comparing his game to Turner’s.

Domantas Sabonis is a much better post player than Turner, he’s more effective at setting screens and he is the more skilled ball-handler and passer. Sabonis is a far more prolific rebounder and a more physical and impactful one-on-one defender down low.

On the surface, these two players would appear to complement each other well since their strengths and weaknesses are different and their skills seem to balance each other out — if you could combine their skill-sets, you’d have a very good all-around player.

Perhaps the biggest concern here is on the defensive end. It sounds good to have one solid interior defender and another who is better at blocking shots (as a help defender) and guarding on the perimeter, but in practice, that may not work so well.

Both of these players would ideally like to play in the paint defensively, because even though Turner has the agility to defend on the perimeter, doing so often would take away much of his effectiveness as a shot-blocker.

Now that we’ve discussed some subjective observations about Turner and Sabonis’ abilities on the court, let’s examine some numbers and see what a more objective approach to this topic reveals.

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When Domantas Sabonis and Myles Turner are both on the floor, the Pacers have a net rating of -5.1 per 100 possessions. When Sabonis is on the court and Turner is on the bench, Indiana registers a +3.7 net rating.

When Turner is in the game and Sabonis is not, the Pacers tally a net rating of +2.8. Finally, when neither player is on the basketball floor, the team struggles to the tune of a -6.6 net rating.

These statistics yield a very clear conclusion: Indiana has not performed well as a team when Domantas Sabonis and Myles Turner have played together this season.

Obviously this pairing isn’t working in the short-term, but these players have only played 177 minutes together all year, so the sample size is relatively small. It hasn’t given the coaching staff much of a chance to figure out how to best utilize their personnel when Turner and Sabonis are both in the game.

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Another consideration is that neither of these players are finished products, so there is still hope that as they play more together and grow individually, they may in fact be able to find ways to benefit the team with their diverse (and expanding) skills.

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