Indiana Pacers: 3 big questions heading into 2019-20

Can Sabonis and Turner share the floor together?

The last time a Twin Towers lineup was a serious championship force in the NBA, David Robinson was still playing alongside a young Tim Duncan and small ball was considered a gimmick that teams that lacked quality big men resorted to in desperation.

It’s a wing-shooting, 3-and-D world out there now and while Myles Turner has shown tremendous touch from long range, hitting 38.8 percent of his 3s on 2.6 attempts per game last season, Domantis Sabonis has deployed the weapon far more sparingly, hitting 52.9 percent, but on just 17 attempts all season.

The Indiana Pacers already have floor spacing problems with their offense, a function of the way they’re coached—more on this later.

The comparison here might be the 76ers offense when Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid are both on the floor and can’t get out of each other’s way because both are trying to use the same part of the court to score.

Sabonis is a fantastic finisher at the rim. He hit 74.1 percent of his shots from three feet and in last season, per Basketball Reference, an almost comical amount of those attempts coming as he followed Tyreke Evans down the lane, positioned himself to get the rebound when Evans missed an easy layup, then dunked the ball home like the play was drawn up that way.

As a point of comparison, Giannis Antetokounmpo hit 76.9 percent of his shots inside three feet. Sabonis is right up there with the true NBA elite when it comes to finishing at the rim.

But unless the Pacers plan to pull an oddball switch where Sabonis is the center on offense and the power forward on defense, allowing Turner to protect the rim and put his best skill — Turner led the league in block percentage in 2018-19 and put up one of the top ten seasons in NBA history by a player not named Manute Bol or Mark Eaton — to use defensively at center.

In theory, if your best big man is playing center and your second-best big man is playing power forward, that should be a sum-of-talents situation.

But twin towers lineups haven’t worked since the NBA’s Dark Ages in the early aughts and there is no compelling statistical evidence to suggest that the Pacers going big as the league goes small is a recipe for anything other than getting run off the floor.