Welcome to the NBA, Evan Turner.
Well, not even the NBA. Summer League, which is a few steps below the NBA in terms of quality of play. But it has still flummoxed the No. 2 pick so far. I watched two games and he has had moments of quality play but mostly has struggled. He’s averaging 9.6 points per game but needs 7.3 shots a game to get them. More than that, he has looked tentative and lost at times.
Even he’ll admit that, as he did to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“Horrible,” Turner said. “It’s not what I expected of myself. I’m not proud of the way I’ve played. But I’m glad for the experience....”
“You just have to play through it,” Turner said. “Sometimes you have to take the bumps and play through that frustration and get on to the next play. It’s a little whirlwind getting acclimated to new surroundings, a new system and everything. It’s a lot quicker. You can’t do certain things you could do in college. You have to make your moves much quicker.”
The big question: Are these struggles a sign of things to come?
Turner has looked good in open court situations, something Sebastian Pruiti broke down at NBA Playbook. The Sixers want to run more this year and they have tried to instill a little of that at Summer League, and when Turner is handling the ball in the open court he has made smart moves. He and Jrue Holliday have had some quality plays together.
But in the half court, Evans has looked slow and unable to create space to get off his own shot. He has overdribbled. Combined that has led to some poor shot selection. It has not been pretty.
The question becomes, is his being tentative the reason he looks slow, or his he just not that fast off the dribble? Defenders will only get better this fall, rotations will be a lot sharper, it will be harder to get off shots. Will Turner be more comfortable and able to get to his spots the way he did at Ohio State. Or are things only going to get worse.
Last season in the Vegas Summer League, Stephen Curry struggled. He was one of those guys that took a while to adjust to the NBA game. But by the end of last season he was getting talked about as a p