Completely agree - all this "chemistry" stuff just seems like a just-so narrative for a slide that started before the Turner trade piggybacking on a desire to yet again indulge in the "Perk trade cost us a ring!" line of wishful thinking.
You've hit two of my pet peeves:
2. Posting "facts" that aren't really true. The Pacers were 7-3 in their 10 games prior to the Turner trade, with a margin of victory of +6.7. They were 7-3 in the 10 games before that, as well. I think it's hard to call that a slide; a .700 win percentage projects to 57 wins. It's certainly a far cry from the 12-13 record they had post-trade. Of those 12 wins, 10 were against the Bucks, Lakers, Celtics, Jazz, 76ers, and Pistons.
So, yes, they were a completely different team post-trade.
This is a good point - mixing and matching sample sizes and victory margin can produce some interesting results. So let's look a bit closer at the actual games. The Pacers' slump began on their January road trip, when after beating Golden State they coasted through the next 4 games, getting blown out by two lottery teams, barely squeaking by the Kings in OT and then pulling away in the 2nd half vs the Lakers. They then returned home and were again badly beaten by Phoenix, extending the slump to 3 losses out of 5.
They made a brief resurgence by squeaking by Brooklyn and Portland at home, along with beating Orlando and Atlanta in Atlanta. Then they dropped 3 of 5 again, to two lottery teams and the eventual 8 seed Mavs. They did mix in a win over Atlanta and a 39 point blowout of Denver, which more than doubled their 10-game margin of victory.
Immediately after trading for Turner they won their next 5, but exclusively against bad teams and only decisively beating the Lakers. Then a close loss to Golden State followed by 3 blowout losses on the road, followed by yet another 4 game win streak against bad teams. Then they stunk out the joint for the rest of the season going 4-9, and continuing vs Atlanta.
If we use the trade as an arbitrary cutoff, sure they played worse afterward than before, but the month before the trade is basically the same as the month after. They were erratic with some good stretches just before the trade, and erratic with some good stretches just after.
There's little indication that the trade caused the problems after it was made, except for one incident between Turner and the guy who's been involved in every other incident too. And the trade definitely didn't cause the 5 losses to lottery teams in the month before it was made. It's just a convenient narrative to attach to their problems.
1. Psychoanalyzing other posters and assigning them motivations. Unless you're a mind-reader, this seems inappropriate.
This is actually one of my pet peeves too. You'd need something like a repeated explicit connection between the two events to conclude they were related.
