Source: Myles Turner planning to make season debut Wednesday at Chicago
The Pacers' center missed the past four games with a left ankle sprain and hasn't played in a regular-season game since Jan. 14.
The anchor of the Pacers’ defense is returning.
Myles Turner plans to make his season debut in Chicago on Wednesday night barring a setback in pregame warmups, Fieldhouse Files has learned.
Turner, the Pacers’ first-round pick in 2015, missed the first four games of the season after a freak accident two hours before the season opener. He stepped on the foot of a basketball assistant (intern) and tweaked his left ankle.
“It’s unfortunate, man,” Turner said the following day. “Definitely not the way I wanted to start the season off. I worked my ass off to get to this point, to come out here and play.”
At 4:51 ET, he posted a hype video on his Instagram with the caption: “Debut 🍿”
Although he was both disappointed and frustrated being unable to play, he was positive about it because it was just a sprain, nothing more. There was not structural damage and it was not related to the stress reaction in that same foot that he has recovered from.
“I got to listen to my medical staff and they’re telling me they’d rather cautious with it and the road trip is the goal,” Turner said last week.
But that stress reaction caused him to miss the final 39 games last season. So he hasn’t played in a regular-season game since Jan. 14 against the Phoenix Suns.
Without him for the first four games, the Pacers (1-3) yielded an average of 121.5 points per game, which ranks 26th in the NBA.
This is Game 2 of a five-game road trip, which continues to Washington on Friday, then on to Brooklyn for a pair of games — on Saturday and Monday.