Speaking on Thursday night to reporters, including J. Michael of The Indianapolis Star, Pacers president of basketball operations Kevin Pritchard acknowledged that the team isn’t expecting to have Victor Oladipo ready to go to start the 2019/20 season. Oladipo continues to recover from the torn quad tendon he suffered in January.
“I’m hopeful that he’s going to be back in December, January,” Pritchard said of Oladipo. “To put a true timeline is not really fair.”
Here are several more Pacers notes worth passing along:
- First-round pick Goga Bitadze will join the Pacers right away rather than being stashed overseas, Michael writes. “Of any of the guys we’ve drafted in the last few years, I think he’s more polished and ready to play in an NBA game than a normal kid coming out of college,” Pritchard said of the Georgian center.
- While the Pacers are committed to playing Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis together, with one of the two at power forward, the team will have trade options available, Michael writes. Multiple league sources have told Michael that no one on Indiana’s roster is really untouchable, though he doesn’t expect the team to move Turner, as he tweeted prior to the draft.
- Bojan Bogdanovic remains the Pacers’ top priority in free agency, while Thaddeus Young appears less likely to be retained, per Michael.
- Pritchard expects to be active in free agency as the Pacers look to fill out their roster, Michael relays. “We’ve got a lot of holes to fill. We’re going to have a lot of money to go out into the marketplace,” Pritchard said. “July 1 is going to be where the real dirty work starts. We got to make some hay in free agency.”
- More from Pritchard, via Michael: “We’ll try to be a good team next year. We’re not going to go young and try to start at the bottom. We want to win again.”
Move Turner. Bad shot selection…he thinks he can shoot the 3….he chucks them up which leaves no one to rebound. He doesn’t follow his shot…he stands and watches.
I understand the sentiment, but the stats show Turner is one of the best defensive bigs in the NBA. He was ranked third overall in defensive box plus minus, coming in behind Gobert and Giannis. Turner also led the league in block percentage last year.
On offense, he’s a net negative. He ranked 30th in true shooting percentage. Shot selection is clearly a problem…but he’s only 23.
Sabonis rates out as better overall in terms of net BPM, and he has a higher shooting percentage, but he’s never going to be the defensive player that Turner is. I like Sabonis a LOT, but he’s probably about as good as he’s ever going to be.
I expect Indiana will keep Turner.
trade Turnerstop it… he’s their anchor on D
Good pick, anticipates the loss of bigs this offseason. Bitadze is more of a warrior than most Euros and can move. Sabonis or Turner is tradable now.
A bad shot equals a turnover. Coach could stop it…not sure why he doesn’t.