The Fantasy Basketball Encyclopedia

Player Dossier · Milwaukee Bucks

Myles Turner

Myles Turner remains a scarce threes-and-blocks center, but Kel'el Ware's arrival and Milwaukee's rebuild turn his previously secure workload into a trade-sensitive 23-minute projection.

Team: Milwaukee Bucks · Position: C · Age entering season: 30 · Experience: 11 seasons

Base projection

GP MPG PTS 3PM REB AST STL BLK FG% (FGA) FT% (FTA) TO
65 25 12.4 2.0 5.6 1.3 0.6 1.6 .450 (9.5) .760 (2.5) 1.1

Correction 2026-07-18: raised from 23 to 25 MPG. The prior figure was a knock-on of a team minute model that under-allocated the whole rotation; SI's Bucks site and Roundtable both project Turner as the opening-night starting center, which is inconsistent with a 23-minute workload even allowing for Ware's growth and Turner's age-30 decline. The trade risk is unchanged and is now stated with named suitors rather than in the abstract. Sources: SI Bucks rotation, Bleacher Report trade interest. - Eligibility: C.

Fantasy case

Turner averaged 11.9 points, 5.3 rebounds, 1.6 blocks, and 2.1 threes in 26.9 minutes across 71 games in 2025-26. Even in a down year, that combination remains difficult to replace. His modest turnovers and ability to space the floor fit both Tyler Herro drives and potential two-big units with Kel'el Ware.

The downside is structural. Ware is 22, produced strongly in Miami, and arrived as a key Giannis-trade asset. Milwaukee could share the frontcourt, stagger the two centers, or eventually trade Turner to a contender. He is the most-cited Milwaukee trade candidate: Toronto has been linked around a Jakob Poeltl and Gradey Dick framework, with Atlanta and Charlotte also canvassing for a veteran center, though reporting says Milwaukee is taking calls rather than actively shopping him. A trade could improve team quality while either raising or lowering individual usage.

Range of outcomes

Case Trigger Projection mechanism
Low Two-big experiment fails; workload drops or bad trade fit 20-22 MPG, outside top 140
Base Starter/closer with Ware sharing center possessions 25 MPG, 2.0 threes, 1.6 blocks
High 28+ MPG and shooting rebounds 13-14 PTS, 2.2 3PM, 1.8 BLK; top 55-75

Category and roster fit

Confidence

Dimension Confidence Why
Roster Medium Under contract but logical contender trade target
Minutes Medium-low Ware overlap and rebuild priorities
Rates High Long-established threes/blocks profile
Availability Medium 71 games last year, but center workload can be managed

Sources

Learning notes

Turner's category scarcity survives a minutes cut. The key is price: he is attractive after the center run, but risky if drafters pay for the old 29-31-minute version without accounting for Ware.

Career record

Pre-NBA: Trinity High School in Euless, Texas — a five-star recruit rated the No. 2 center in the country behind Jahlil Okafor, a 2014 McDonald's All-American, and a gold medalist at the 2014 FIBA Americas Under-18 Championship. One season at Texas, 2014-15: 10.1 points, 6.5 rebounds, and 2.6 blocks per game, Big 12 Freshman of the Year. He declared after his freshman year. Draft: 2015, first round, 11th overall by Indiana; no draft-night trade. He spent ten seasons with the Pacers, reaching the 2025 NBA Finals in his last one, then signed a four-year deal reported at roughly $108.9 million with Milwaukee on July 7, 2025.

Season Age Team GP MPG PTS REB AST STL BLK 3PM FG% FT% TO
2015-16 19 IND 60 22.8 10.3 5.5 0.7 0.4 1.4 0.1 .498 .727 1.1
2016-17 20 IND 81 31.4 14.5 7.3 1.3 0.9 2.1 0.5 .511 .809 1.3
2017-18 21 IND 65 28.2 12.7 6.4 1.3 0.6 1.8 0.9 .479 .777 1.5
2018-19 22 IND 74 28.6 13.3 7.2 1.6 0.8 2.7 1.0 .487 .736 1.4
2019-20 23 IND 62 29.5 12.1 6.6 1.2 0.7 2.1 1.4 .457 .751 1.4
2020-21 24 IND 47 31.0 12.6 6.5 1.0 0.9 3.4 1.5 .477 .782 1.4
2021-22 25 IND 42 29.4 12.9 7.1 1.0 0.7 2.8 1.5 .509 .752 1.3
2022-23 26 IND 62 29.4 18.0 7.5 1.4 0.6 2.3 1.5 .548 .783 1.7
2023-24 27 IND 77 27.0 17.1 6.9 1.3 0.5 1.9 1.5 .524 .773 1.4
2024-25 28 IND 72 30.2 15.6 6.5 1.5 0.8 2.0 2.2 .481 .773 1.7
2025-26 29 MIL 71 26.9 11.9 5.3 1.5 0.7 1.6 2.1 .440 .740 1.2
Career 713 28.6 13.9 6.6 1.3 0.7 2.1 1.3 .494 .769 1.4

Honors: All-Rookie second team in 2016; led the NBA in blocks twice, at 2.7 in 2018-19 and 3.4 in 2020-21; became the Pacers' franchise blocks leader in 2024. Note that 2019-20 was a 73-game season for Indiana and 2020-21 was a 72-game league schedule, so those GP totals are less alarming than they look against 82.

Fantasy history: Not verifiable. Despite eleven seasons and a long history as a category-league staple, no season-end 9-category per-game rank could be confirmed from Basketball Monster, Hashtag, or ESPN Player Rater archives for any individual year, and assigning ranks from memory would be exactly the kind of invented precision this file should not contain. What the box scores support: his peak category seasons are 2018-19 and 2020-21 on the strength of league-leading block rates, and 2022-23 on the strength of 18.0 points at .548, while 2025-26 is clearly the worst full season of his career in every category except turnovers and threes. The points-league shape has always been worse than the category shape and is worse still now — blocks and low turnovers, two of his three best traits, are weakly rewarded or ignored in per-game points formats, and 11.9 points is not enough to carry him there.

Durability: 60, 81, 65, 74, 62, 47, 42, 62, 77, 72, 71. He has cleared 75 games once in eleven years. Named causes: left thumb surgery cost 21 games from November 13 to December 28 in his rookie season; a concussion cost eight games and a right elbow injury nine more in 2017-18; a left foot stress reaction on January 28, 2022 ended his 2021-22 season at 42 games; and in 2025-26 he missed 11 games in Milwaukee with a knee issue and a calf strain. The causes of the 2019-20, 2020-21, and 2022-23 absences are not verified here. The pattern is many small-to-medium absences rather than one catastrophic injury, and the foot stress reaction is the only event that cost him a meaningful chunk of a season. That profile usually gets worse, not better, past 30.

Trajectory: The peak was 2022-23 and the 2025-26 season is a genuine decline, not a minutes artifact — this is the number that matters. Scoring per minute fell from 0.52 in 2024-25 to 0.44 in 2025-26, roughly 14 percent, while rebounds per minute fell about 8 percent and blocks per minute about 11 percent. Only one thing improved on a rate basis: three-point volume, which rose about 7 percent per minute even as his field-goal percentage cratered to .440, a career low by 17 points. Read together, those two facts describe a big whose interior scoring has evaporated and who is compensating by launching more threes at a worse overall clip — the shot diet moved outward because the rim game stopped working, not because a coach asked for spacing. The block-title version of him is four years gone; 1.6 is his lowest since his rookie year. He enters 2026-27 at 30 with 713 games of mileage, which is where centers typically begin shedding a category a year, and Kel'el Ware's arrival means Milwaukee has both the incentive and the personnel to cut his minutes further or move him at the deadline. The honest projection treats 2025-26 as the new baseline rather than an adjustment-year blip, and prices him for the threes rather than the blocks.

Career sources: ESPN career stats · StatMuse season-by-season · Wikipedia

Open questions