The impacts of Tyrese Haliburton’s Achilles injury are already being felt by the Indiana Pacers before the next season even begins.
ESPN’s Brian Windhorst suggested Tuesday that the Pacers might have made a greater effort to retain center Myles Turner if Haliburton was not out for the season with the injury he suffered in Game 7 of the NBA Finals. Turner’s contract is not an unreasonable one, but matching it would have pushed the Pacers into the luxury tax.
“This number — $27 million per year — is not out of line for a center of his quality,” Windhorst said of Turner. “This number isn’t high. The issue is, if the Pacers had matched this offer, they would have gone significantly into the luxury tax, something they haven’t done in 20 years. I do believe if Tyrese Haliburton had not become injured, the Pacers probably would have been willing to go to this level. Clearly, they got to a point where they weren’t willing to go.”
There is an argument to be made that Haliburton’s injury cost the Pacers Game 7. The effects will linger far beyond that, though. The Pacers know that they do not have a realistic path to contending for a championship again until Haliburton is healthy, and investing that much in next year’s roster with that in mind was evidently a non-starter for them.
Instead, Turner is off to the Milwaukee Bucks, where he will pair with Giannis Antetokounmpo for the next four seasons. If that elevates the Bucks to another title, Pacers fans will wonder even more what could have been.
