The Curious Case of Evan Turner

[ImShakHeIsShaq]

i like him. he is a good player, of course he is going to be up and down, he isn't a star.

[Neurotic Guy]

I don't agree that ET is totally feast or famine.  He's inconsistent with good games, bad games and OK games.  I think he generally adds more than he subtracts. 

ET fills the stat sheet, he gives good effort and, as hwangjini points out, he is one of the only C's able to create his own space.  Sometimes he over-dribbles and over-fancies but as a comparison, he is much more reliable (much less boneheaded) with the ball than Tony Allen was --  ET does less defensively but more offensively than TA (I think he is equally valuable as Celtics' TA was).   

I don't love the guy, but he has a fairly important role on the current team and I think Stevens has regard for his skills. 

[feckless]

Point forward is correct.  He quite simply is the best passer on a team that does not have a true point guard.  Yes he makes mistakes but he IMO has the best passing instincts and is the most accurate at getting guys the ball where they like it and are able to do something with it.  With a true point guard I am not sure what his role would be?  But on this team he has a lot of value. The ball moves better with him out there.

[guava_wrench]

There is nothing curious about ET's performances over the course of many games. It is what you would expect. He loves taking shots from the worst spots on the floor. He likes midrange turnaround fadeaways. Those are horrible shots unless you are Kobe or Dirk. Or even Pierce.

There is a lot he can do, but his scoring will always be erratic because he can't shoot from deep and he loves the most inefficient shots in the game. If he "creates his own space", it is often because he settles for a bad shot the other team wants him to take anyway.

[guava_wrench]

Point forward is correct.  He quite simply is the best passer on a team that does not have a true point guard.  Yes he makes mistakes but he IMO has the best passing instincts and is the most accurate at getting guys the ball where they like it and are able to do something with it.  With a true point guard I am not sure what his role would be?  But on this team he has a lot of value. The ball moves better with him out there.

I don't know if he is the best passer, but he is the most willing to make a risky pass. That means he get a lot of nice assists, but he can also get more turnovers.

I am glad we picked him up on such an affordable contract, but I also look forward to the day he gets replaced with someone with a brighter future who can better fit an effective system for the modern NBA.

[feckless]

You can call it what you want but the run last year and the teams production this year require Evan Turner.  Rozier may one day be a point guard but Smart and IT are not point guards and have poor instincts for the position. 

But just keep wishing for someone else and bashing Turner-- me i would prefer to win>

[crimson_stallion]

This is a situation (and a player) that I just don't get!

Most of us (myself included) have wanted him gone to let other people, especially the youngsters, get minutes... but the perplexing thing is that while his stats are so-so (his PER is pretty bad), the team seems to play better when he's on the floor).

Is he just a good fit for this system? Should we keep him (even if begrudgingly) and maybe trade other people to get stronger in other areas?

This is something that I just really don't get...

I think it's pretty simple.

At the end of the day, we really only have three guys on this team who can break down the defense in one-on-one / ISO situations:

* Isaiah Thomas
* Evan Turner
* Terry Rozier

When we played Indiana, one of their commentators at one point made a comment, something along the lines of:

"When he gets into the paint, our entire defense collapses, and somebody always ends up open"

Just as they said that, Thomas found somebody (I think Bradley) on the perimeter for a wide open three.

When Turner is out there, he basically has the same impact.  He's always in attack mode, and he uses his very crafty ball handling (and better than advertised quickness) to get past defenders and get into the paint time after time.  When the defense collapses (and they always do) the result is always either one of:

a) He either dribbles the ball off his foot for a turnover

or

b) He finds an open teammate on the perimeter for a wide open three

You can't understimate the impact this one simple thing has on the game. 

When we were starting Smart/Bradley/Crowder/Lee/Zeller there was nobody in that lineup who could get into the paint with any kind of consistency.  Lee and Zeller are capable finishers around the basket, but they aren't dominant enough to draw constant double teams.  So since there is nobody to draw the defense inside, our shooters are always swarmed by defenders. 

Simple logic - if you can't get to the basket off the dribble, and you can't get to the basket on post ups, and you can't get open shots on the perimeter...how are you supposed to get any efficient shots?

I strongly believe that we should have Turner and Thomas on separate lineups at all times, because we should pretty much never have a lineup out there which doesn't feature one of those two guys.  My personal suggestion is that we start Smart/Bradley/Turner and bring Thomas/somebody/Crowder off the bench. 

The challenge there however, is that we don't really have an experienced backup SG if we are putting Turner in at SF. 

Maybe we can go big on the second lineup with Thomas / Crowder / Jerebko?  It would certainly help to overcome some of Thomas' size problems.

Or another option is to use Rozier and Hunter off the bench in that back up SG role - I think both look pretty comfortable out there. 

The important thing is that, hard as it is to swallow, Turner's ability to get into the paint makes him pretty irreplacable right now.  The fact that he's a very good rebounder (and that his defense seems to have improved a lot) only add to his importance.

Simply put, Evan Turner makes things happen, and the offense is rarely ever stagnant and slow when he is out there.  He's always attacking, and he's always putting pressure on the defense - and when he's not scoring himself, he's creating shots for others or softening up the D. 

[crimson_stallion]

There is nothing curious about ET's performances over the course of many games. It is what you would expect. He loves taking shots from the worst spots on the floor. He likes midrange turnaround fadeaways. Those are horrible shots unless you are Kobe or Dirk. Or even Pierce.

There is a lot he can do, but his scoring will always be erratic because he can't shoot from deep and he loves the most inefficient shots in the game. If he "creates his own space", it is often because he settles for a bad shot the other team wants him to take anyway.

While this is true based on mathematical theory, but the fact is that a shot that made is always more valuable then a shot that is NOT made - and this is where all of those "everybody shoot nothing but threes" argument falls to pieces.

There were a couple of games there where we had nothing going for us - we couldn't buy a shot.  The Turner came in, played aggressive, and and hit bout 3 or 4 shots in a row. 

All of those shots were long two's which players theoretically should never take...but him making those shots led to a couple of things:

1) It collapsed the defense in, causing other perimeter shooters to get open
2) It closed the score of the game, giving his teammates the confidence to make a run
3) It put pressure on the defense, knowing that Boston were starting to make a run

None of these things happen if Turner doesn't make those 3 or 4 quick shots.  If we just kept having our perimeter guys chucking (and bricking) threes, then we're giving the other team rebounds, which lead to possession, which lead to baskets, which lead to the lead increasing, which lead to our guys losing confidence and the opponent gaining confidence, which eventually leads to our likely demise.

So as much as I love the whole "die by the three" concept, I think some people take it way, way too literally.  I believe you need to have a balanced offense.  You need guys who can hit the three, but you also need guys who can score from midrange, guys who can score in the paint, and guys who can get to the foul line.  When your offense becomes all about the three point shot, you become far too easy to defend.

The only time I believe you can really kill teams with the three is when you have somebody on your roster who is dominant at scoring in the paint.  That might be a dominant post scorer (e.g. Cousins, Monroe, Jefferson) or it could be a perimeter guy who excels at getting into the paint (Lebron, Wade, Rose, etc).   When you have a guy like that who threatens to dominate the paint, it forces the opponent to overplay that part of your offence and collapse all of their defense to stop said player - and this opens up the perimeter for you to rain in the threes.

It's the same thing Detroit is doing right now, with Drummond in the middle.

We actually have a decent number of shooters - but we need that "dominate the paint" player on the court for those guys to consistently get good looks.  Thomas, Turner and Sully are really the closest things we have to that, so if we don't have at least one of those guys out there we're going to have trouble getting off good looks from the perimeter.

[BDeCosta26]

It's pretty easy to see why Turner was the #2 pick in the draft. He has a really solid handle, he has elite court vision for a 6'6 forward, he can create his own shot in the mid-range with relative ease and is pretty good at getting to the rack. In his time here at least, he puts forth good effort on D even though he has mental lapses. His shooting from mid-range and the FT line had always suggested that he can develop an at least average shot from deep. He has a fairly high BBIQ, but has a tendency to over-think things and cause pretty bad looking TO's.

But therein lies where his problems have always come from. ET is good at some things, and he has games where he looks really good, but he's never really been able to improve in his areas of weakness. He's never developed even average off-ball skills, which forces him into a role of primary ball-handler when he's on the court, but because of his limitations using him as your primary ball-handler can only work in specific situations (as it did at the end of last year.)

Turner's looked better in the past few games because of Smart's absence, IMO. I get the feeling Brad and Ainge don't wanna put him next to Marcus all the time since it will stunt his growth as a ball-handler, but putting him next to IT is even worse because we depend on IT to generate points, and playing him with Turner forces him to play off the ball sometimes and takes away from the things Thomas does so well. With Smart out the past few games, the need for a non-Smart/IT ball-handler opened up and Turner (who's always had good chemistry with Sully) stepped up.

When Smart is back though, I wonder where he fits on this team again. The starting line-up we used at the start of the year surely needed an offensive jolt, but relegating Smart to an off-ball bail-out 3 point shooter like he was at times last year probably isn't the answer. Smart's done pretty well running the O this year and it's more important to our future to develop that than finding Turner minutes. Plus, when Smart returns I expect a change in the front court for the starters. By either swapping out one of Lee/Zeller for one of Sullinger/Olynyk, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Amir continue starting as well, with the hope of it jolting the starting offense. But if you can't play him much with Smart or Thomas (which I think Brad has proven you can't since he's sure tried), you've gotta put him at the end of the bench and only call on him when your really struggling to put something together.

It's a very curious case indeed. He might be one of the two or three best passers on the team, he's one of the only guys on the team who can consistently generate a half-way decent look when things break down, and by all accounts he's been a great teammate and a solid all around presence to have in the locker room with this young team. But even with all that being true, it takes a special set of circumstances to get the best out of Evan Turner's game and barring injury or terrible play I just have a hard time seeing where he fits on this team all year in a way that consistently helps them more than hurts them.

[Emmette Bryant]

It's pretty easy to see why Turner was the #2 pick in the draft. He has a really solid handle, he has elite court vision for a 6'6 forward, he can create his own shot in the mid-range with relative ease and is pretty good at getting to the rack. In his time here at least, he puts forth good effort on D even though he has mental lapses. His shooting from mid-range and the FT line had always suggested that he can develop an at least average shot from deep. He has a fairly high BBIQ, but has a tendency to over-think things and cause pretty bad looking TO's.

But therein lies where his problems have always come from. ET is good at some things, and he has games where he looks really good, but he's never really been able to improve in his areas of weakness. He's never developed even average off-ball skills, which forces him into a role of primary ball-handler when he's on the court, but because of his limitations using him as your primary ball-handler can only work in specific situations (as it did at the end of last year.)

Turner's looked better in the past few games because of Smart's absence, IMO. I get the feeling Brad and Ainge don't wanna put him next to Marcus all the time since it will stunt his growth as a ball-handler, but putting him next to IT is even worse because we depend on IT to generate points, and playing him with Turner forces him to play off the ball sometimes and takes away from the things Thomas does so well. With Smart out the past few games, the need for a non-Smart/IT ball-handler opened up and Turner (who's always had good chemistry with Sully) stepped up.

When Smart is back though, I wonder where he fits on this team again. The starting line-up we used at the start of the year surely needed an offensive jolt, but relegating Smart to an off-ball bail-out 3 point shooter like he was at times last year probably isn't the answer. Smart's done pretty well running the O this year and it's more important to our future to develop that than finding Turner minutes. Plus, when Smart returns I expect a change in the front court for the starters. By either swapping out one of Lee/Zeller for one of Sullinger/Olynyk, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Amir continue starting as well, with the hope of it jolting the starting offense. But if you can't play him much with Smart or Thomas (which I think Brad has proven you can't since he's sure tried), you've gotta put him at the end of the bench and only call on him when your really struggling to put something together.

It's a very curious case indeed. He might be one of the two or three best passers on the team, he's one of the only guys on the team who can consistently generate a half-way decent look when things break down, and by all accounts he's been a great teammate and a solid all around presence to have in the locker room with this young team. But even with all that being true, it takes a special set of circumstances to get the best out of Evan Turner's game and barring injury or terrible play I just have a hard time seeing where he fits on this team all year in a way that consistently helps them more than hurts them.

I love it when Mike Gorman called ET an"east-west player"