The 2025 NBA offseason hasn’t featured the most player movement of the last five years. But it hasn’t been short of surprising moves. Myles Turner’s decision to sign with the Milwaukee Bucks shocked the basketball world. Even New York Knicks superstar Jalen Brunson couldn’t believe it when news of the deal broke.
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After the Indiana Pacers reached the 2025 NBA Finals, it felt like a foregone conclusion that they would re-sign Turner. After all, they were only a game away from winning it all. Who knows what could’ve happened if Tyrese Haliburton hadn’t torn his Achilles?
Retaining Turner would have put the Pacers over the luxury tax for the first time in 20 seasons. All reports suggested that management was willing to make that sacrifice to keep Turner, who had already spent 10 seasons in Indiana.
Instead, he moved on to the divisional rival Bucks. Brunson understands the business side of the NBA but still finds Turner’s departure puzzling.
“I thought the Myles Turner thing was weird,” Brunson said on the Roommates Show. “He just spent a decade here and then boom, gone. You know what’s crazy about that? I feel like he was on the trading block every year.”
Although Turner was with the Pacers for a decade, the relationship wasn’t smooth, and the team looked to part ways with him on multiple occasions. This year, he had the opportunity to look out for himself, and he took full advantage of it.
Brunson’s teammate and cohost, Josh Hart, doesn’t fault Turner for thinking of himself. “For NBA players, we have such a small window of our lives to make the most money that we can. So, in a certain aspect, we have to be kind of selfish in that regard,” Hart revealed.
League sources suggest that the Pacers offered Turner less than $23 million annually. The Bucks waived Damian Lillard to create the financial flexibility to offer Turner nearly $27 million annually. He took the deal.
“Some people are like, ‘He should have just took the money and been loyal.’ The flip side of it is that a lot of the time, the teams are never loyal to what the players are,” Hart said.
Milwaukee’s urgency to complete the deal was far greater than Indiana’s, and that surely left a good impression on Turner. It’s a shame that the Pacers won’t be able to run it again with their core, but that’s the nature of the league.
Milwaukee and Indiana already didn’t like each other when they played, but animosity will be at an all-time high in the upcoming season.
