'Fight fire with fire.' Myles Turner's dunk on Giannis, blocks set tone in Pacers' Game 4 win

Indianapolis Star

28-04-2025

MILWAUKEE -- Obi Toppin stood out of his bench seat at the moment Myles Turner 's right foot hit the paint because he could see what was coming.
The Pacers' 10th-year veteran center had the ball in his hand and a full head of steam, and all that was standing between him and the rim was one of the three best basketball players in the world and possibly the most dominant physical force in the game.
The 6-11, 242-pound marble-chiseled frame of Giannis Antetokounmpo was coming right at Turner, but Turner was coming at him with even more momentum and at that point Turner couldn't have decelerated into a floater if he wanted to. There was going to be a mid-air collision of two 6-11 humans combining for just under 500 pounds, and Toppin — himself a Slam Dunk Contest champion — couldn't help but get out of his chair to see who was going to get the better of it.
So when Turner glanced off of Antetokounmpo's body without altering his flight pattern, kept control of the ball and threw down a violent right-handed tomahawk dunk, Toppin jumped in the air almost as high as Turner did. He then hopped around in a circle turning back toward the sideline looking for anybody else to hug him as the rest of the Pacers' bench similarly lost its collective mind.
"That dunk definitely set the tone for the second half," Toppin said. "He came out here and he ran through one of their best guys to dunk the ball. Obviously, that got everybody on the bench — I don't know if y'all got the reaction to that — but everybody on the bench was going crazy. That was just juice that filled us."
Turner had already set a tone long before that dunk, which came on the Pacers' first offensive possession of the second half. As a collective, Indiana came into Sunday night's Game 4 of the first round of the NBA Eastern Conference playoffs determined to make sure it was a lot different than Game 3, but Turner — the longest-tenured Pacer — was particularly determined after a fairly brutal individual performance.
After making just 1-of-9 field goals and turning the ball over four times in that defeat and making a relatively limited defensive impact by his lofty standards, Turner scored a team-leading 23 points 9-of-13 shooting, grabbed five rebounds, dished out three assists and came through with four mammoth blocks in the Pacers' 129-103 win in Game 4 at Fiserv Forum.
The victory gives Indiana a 3-1 series lead an an opportunity to close it out at home Tuesday in Game 5.
"He was big-time," Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton said of Turner. "I think if you ask him, he probably didn't have the game he wanted to have last game. I felt like he got a lot of good looks, he just didn't knock them down. There was no panic for us after Game 3."
There was, however, a point of emphasis, a decision on behalf of Haliburton, Turner and the Pacers in general to be aggressive about putting Turner in more advantageous spots, to get him going early with shots closer to the basket, and allow him to build out from there.
The Pacers as a whole ended too many plays in isolation situations and settled too much in Game 3. Turner's only bucket in the game was a layup, but he took just three shots inside the arc and two in the paint while taking and missing six 3-pointers. Some of those were wide open looks he wouldn't have dreamed of passing up, but he didn't use his 6-11, 250-pound frame to impose any real will and he didn't use his mid-range jumper which is also an important weapon.
Turner is coming off his best 3-point shooting season, shooting a career-best 39.6% from beyond the arc with a career-high 156 made 3-pointers — 40 beyond his previous career-high — but he can also be a problem between 5 and 20 feet. His ability to score at three levels is the reason he's been such an effective ball screen partner for Haliburton as the best three scoring seasons of his career have been the three seasons since Haliburton was acquired including his 15.6 points per game this season.
So on Sunday, Turner got his game started in the mid-range. He caught a pass on a screen-and-roll from Haliburton in the middle of the paint and stepped back to around 13 feet to hit a fadeaway over Bucks center Brook Lopez with 10:15 to go in the first quarter. He then hit an 18-footer on a short roll, then got a layup in transition past Lopez with Antetokounmpo stuck in the backcourt after he fell over trying to block out Turner.
In the first 3 minutes and 4 seconds of Sunday's game, he had seven points — one more than he had all day Friday — and he scored nine of the Pacers' first 13 points before the Bucks' Doc Rivers called a timeout.
"I was aggressive offensively, just picking and choosing my spots," Turner said. "Tyrese did a good job of getting me the ball in the pick-and-roll and I made some shots. It was exactly what we talked about last game. Sometimes it's a make or miss league. I missed a lot of shots last game, made a lot of shots this game. The difference was just that."
But it wasn't just that. Turner's process was different and he continued to find more opportunities to score that weren't his bread-and-butter pick-and-pop 3s. He wasn't afraid to drive at Lopez or Antetokounmpo or to try to score over them, but he also hunted mismatches on switches and in transition so he could either blast through or shoot over smaller wings and guards.
"Being intentional running the floor," Turner said when asked how he was able to create some of those mismatches. "I think when you run the floor at times and you get out, at times guards have to take you. Even if I don't get the ball, it makes guys have to look in and there are shots on the perimeter and what not. Just continuing to mix it up and run the floor in the flow of our offense."
The dunk on Antetokounmpo came because Turner was running the floor hard after a missed layup by Milwaukee's Kyle Kuzma. And it came because Turner had made a decision not to back down from Antetokounmpo and to try to match his physicality on both ends of the floor.
The Pacers generally don't use Turner as a primary defender on Antetokounmpo but as the Pacers' rim protector he has to deal with him plenty on the defensive end, and scoring in the paint against the Bucks often means going through the two-time MVP. Antetokounmpo had won most of the head-to-head battles between the two in the first three games, and Turner knew changing that dynamic meant bringing more force.
"Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire," Turner said. "I think that you have to bring the fight to him at times and go at him defensively as well."
Turner was physical with Antetokounmpo on defense. The first two of his four blocks were on Antetokounmpo's shot attempts. On the first, he came from the weak side when Antetokounmpo spun around Pacers forward Aaron Nesmith and Turner pinned his shot against the backboard. On the second, he met Antetokounmpo driving down the left side of the lane, got his hands on the ball and forced a tie-up.
Turner helped the Pacers hold Antetokounmpo to just eight points on 3-of-10 shooting in the first half. The two-time MVP dialed it up a notch in the second half with fellow All-Star Damian Lillard out after suffering a potentially devastating leg injury in the first half, scoring 18 points in the third quarter alone to finish with 28 points, 15 rebounds and six assists. However, that was the lowest scoring game and least efficient night of the series for Antetokounmpo and Turner had a lot to do with that.
Turner has been around long enough to know just how hard it is to slow down Antetokounmpo. In 44 career regular season games against the Pacers, he's averaging 24.7 points, 10.1 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game, and that's with his first three seasons holding down the average. In each of the past five seasons, Antetokounmpo has averaged at least 30 points per game against the Pacers including 42.2 per game in 2023-24 when he set a franchise record with 64 points in a win and also scored 54 in a loss. He's still averaging 33.8 points per game on 62.2% shooting and 14.3 rebounds per game in this series, leading all players in the playoffs in both categories.
"I think it's just experience," Turner said. "Having to guard him for a long time, he's gotten the better of me quite a bit. But studying film and studying tendencies, I think that's a big part of it. Once you're actually out there in the fire, you either sink or swim. I think I'm starting to figure some things out, but at the same time, he's still a great player. Just as you figure out one thing one night, that doesn't mean it's going to be the same thing the next night."
But on Sunday night the Pacers figured out enough to put them in a position to not have to deal with what coach RIck Carlisle called the "impossible" problem of Antetokounmpo much longer. The Pacers shot 60.2% from the floor including 46.2% (18-of-39) from 3-point range, putting eight players in double figures with 36 assists on 50 baskets for a robust 1.35 points per possession for their highest scoring and most efficient night of the series.
"It's just the power of moving the ball," Turner said. "After watching the film of the third quarter of last game, I think that we didn't necessarily take bad shots, but it just wasn't our brand of basketball. I think we did an amazing job of moving the ball tonight. When the ball hums like that, great things happen for us."
Great things also happen for the Pacers when they get the best version of Turner, the one who is willing to fight fire with fire.