As Myles Turner put on his jersey and prepared for media day, an annual obligation that unofficially signals the start of a new season for all NBA players, the 10-year veteran needed a second look at himself.
“Media day was a little funky, I’m not gonna lie,” Turner told The Athletic in an exclusive interview during the team’s training-camp visit to Miami. “I first put (the jersey) on, I just saw it, and it was unnatural.”
For the first time in his career, Turner was not wearing the navy blue and gold of the Indiana Pacers. Instead, he donned the white, green and cream Association jersey of the Milwaukee Bucks, one of the base jerseys of a team Turner helped eliminate from the first round of the playoffs last season and played multiple times during his stint in Indiana.
“You spend so much time going against a division rival and playing these guys 10 to 11 times a year,” Turner said. “Obviously, it was an adjustment period looking in the mirror.”
Wearing that jersey for the first time might have been a shock, but it was an exception to how Turner has felt since moving to his new city. Turner has embraced Milwaukee and the new experiences that have come with the city’s warm, Midwestern welcome.
The city’s newest near-7-footer has thrown out a first pitch at American Family Field and cheered on the Milwaukee Brewers in a playoff game. He’s sat in the grass at Veterans Park and looked over Lake Michigan. He’s eaten cheese curds and drank a beer at Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers. He’s made the traditional fall trip down Interstate 94 to pick apples at Apple Holler.
Turner has embraced the city, and the city has embraced him back. But that embrace hasn’t been the only thing that has made changing teams for the first time so simple.
“After that (media-day shock), these guys have made it so easy for me to come in here and fit seamlessly. Like, I get along with these dudes,” Turner said. “I mean, I’m welcomed here and all that type of stuff, celebrated. So, it’s just good s—.”
Say hello to MKE’s new Big Man…@Bucks star @Original_Turner is in the house 🏀 pic.twitter.com/Tt4UcSy8wX
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) September 28, 2025
While he has quickly been able to adjust to his new environment, the 29-year-old big man admits he was not expecting to make a change when the offseason began.
Following the Pacers’ heartbreaking Game 7 loss in the 2025 NBA Finals, Indiana’s then-starting center spent a few days at home to decompress before heading to Hawaii at the end of June — meaning he would be on vacation at the start of free agency. Turner was confident the organization would present a new contract that kept him in Indiana, his only NBA home, while he relaxed in a tropical paradise. But that call never came.
Instead, the Pacers’ longest-tenured player was forced to find a new home.
“I think in my head, I thought that we would be on the same page in terms of where I’m at in my career, being 29 years old, heading into my prime and just knowing what I wanted from this next contract,” Turner said. “But we, unfortunately, just weren’t aligned.
“It was a surprise because I had a great, great conversation with the front office before I left, and I really thought that we were aligned for the future. So, it was kind of a shock that our heads weren’t together.”
A league source familiar with the conversations told The Athletic that even after a series of negotiations, the Pacers’ offer never extended past three years and never went above an average of $22 million per year. Feeling that was not enough for a player of Turner’s ilk, his agent, Austin Brown, looked elsewhere around the league for a new home for his client.
While it would take some creative (and somewhat risky) salary-cap maneuvering, the Bucks emerged as a team that could create cap space for one of the biggest names on the market and eventually offered up every penny they created with a four-year, $108.9 million deal.
“The hardest thing about all this was, of course, there are my sentimental ties to the city and to the fans and where I was,” Turner said of the Pacers.
Because of those ties, Turner has approached his public comments since the move thoughtfully and attempted to carefully articulate his feelings in order to avoid offending the fan base and community that cheered for him for the last decade in Indiana. But that has not totally worked.
On media day, wearing a Bucks jersey for the first time, Turner told reporters his change of scenery made him reflect on the quote, “Go where you’re celebrated.” He felt as though that referred to the Bucks, the organization that signed him over the summer. But when a shorter version of that quote was aggregated on social media, many Pacers fans who once celebrated Turner’s contributions got upset.
So, the Bucks’ new center went to X to offer clarification.
This Quote Has NOTHING To Do With Indy Fans & EVERYTHING To Do With My Free Agency Experience https://t.co/eYsTnxPNWN
— Myles Turner (@Original_Turner) October 1, 2025
Ultimately, Turner understands why the situation is so charged and why all parties may feel aggrieved after a sudden end to a decade-long relationship, especially after Indiana fell one win short of the franchise’s first NBA title.
“I think that we had spent three to four years trying to build something in Indiana, and then it just abruptly comes to an end,” Turner said. “Of course, there’s gonna be frustration on the fans’ ends, organization’s end and just people around me, but no matter what I say or do, they’re gonna take my words and use it against me.
“The best way I can say it is my family’s happy, I’m happy. I’m coming to a situation now where I think I can be utilized right away and help this team, and just gotta let bygones be bygones. It kind of is what it is. I don’t know what to expect when I go back on Nov. 3, but it’s gonna be fun regardless.”
When the Bucks signed Turner, they thought they had a pretty good idea of who they were getting on the floor.
Turner is one of only seven players standing 6-foot-10 or taller — the others being Jaren Jackson Jr., Brook Lopez, Lauri Markkanen, Kristaps Porziņģis, Karl Anthony-Towns, and Nikola Vučević — to average least four 3-pointers per game in each of the last six seasons, per Basketball Reference’s Stathead. During that same six-season span, no one in the NBA has blocked more shots than Turner, who swatted 837 since the start of the 2019-20 season.
Giannis Antetokounmpo is a two-time NBA MVP and remains one of the best basketball players in the world. He can make things work for his team with nearly any type of player on the floor. But Antetokounmpo’s best basketball tends to come with teammates who can space the floor and knock down 3s, so having a big man capable of combining those two likes, Turner now and Lopez before him, is massively important.
With Myles Turner (left) now on the roster, the Milwaukee Bucks have another player with leadership traits alongside Giannis Antetokounmpo. (John Fisher / Getty Images)
But what the Bucks didn’t know until they got Turner in their building was that he is also a real leader. Despite being the new guy in town, Turner immediately became a prominent voice in the Bucks’ locker room and leaned on that leadership role.
“Leaders lead,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers told The Athletic of Turner’s willingness to be a leader in a new place. “You can put General Patton anywhere, he’s still going to lead.”
When players first started arriving in Milwaukee, Turner was a part of the pick-up games and the workouts in the facility. As they played, his voice was among the loudest, according to his teammates. With the Bucks embracing a faster pace, Turner’s expertise from playing with the Pacers for the last few years was welcomed, and his ability to explain and teach concepts became important.
“I’m just enjoying the challenge, honestly,” Turner said. “I feel like I’ve always been a natural-born leader, and I have leadership qualities.
“I’ve seen many locker rooms. Obviously, I’ve seen many playoff series. I’ve seen many situations in this league, so I think some of the guys are kind of leaning on that experience. It’s not very many guys in this league that have been to the finals, let alone got as close as we did. So, I am just kind of leaning into everything I’ve learned.”
For example, Turner used the term “high outlets” in a media scrum following one of the Bucks’ first training-camp sessions. When asked to define that term a few days later, the veteran center referred to where he wants guards to catch the outlet passes he throws to them off rebounds.
Instead of guards looking for the ball in the middle of the floor, Turner started emphasizing the importance of finding an area on the sideline near the coach’s box to catch the first pass on a fast break, because it is a cleaner area with fewer defenders to catch an outlet pass and also gives the guards a cleaner lane to throw a kick-ahead pass up the sideline for an early 3.
“He’s just a good communicator,” Bobby Portis said. “I didn’t know that Myles talked as much as he did, especially going against him so many years and especially the last couple years; (we) played them like 20-something times. I didn’t know he talked as much as he does, and I like his leadership as well off the court.
“Just talking to guys, keeping guys locked in. You need those things, for sure, from all the veterans that have been in the league. We’re such a young team that we’re to teach guys on the fly how to win, so he’s going to be great for us.”
Being a leader, though, is not only about having the loudest voice in the room; actions also are needed. Few things exemplify selflessness and leadership better than Turner’s hyperactivity off the ball as a screener and cutter. Turner only played 55 minutes in three preseason games for the Bucks, but his non-stop activity was among the most noticeable traits of the new-look Bucks.
“I just hate standing still,” Turner said. “I hate standing still within the flow of the offense. There were times early in my career where I was just in the corner. I would just stand and wait for the ball to come to me. But there’s a lot of things you can do outside of the ball.
“There’s a lot of ways to get creative, so I try to take advantage of that. Just seeing the way I see the floor. I don’t have to have the ball in my hands to be effective, and I want to make sure I bring that here. Make sure our guys know that I’m working for them, not against them.”
With his team in trouble and the shot clock running down, watch what Turner did on this play against the Chicago Bulls to create something out of nothing. Turner could have tried to make something happen in isolation, but he knows he is at his best when he involves a teammate. He moved the Bucks into their next action and kept moving to open space, which ultimately sent him to the free-throw line.
All it takes is one play to see just how much Turner does without the ball in his hands, but that type of movement isn’t an outlier; it is the norm for Turner each time down the floor.
And his activity has not gone unnoticed.
“I’ve said this: This comes from a winning culture. I don’t think he knows that he’s doing that,” Antetokounmpo said when asked about Turner’s non-stop movement. “It’s just a habit that he’s created because he’s played in an incredible system for a lot of years, and he understands that movement is dangerous.
“I hear him all the time on the bench when the other bigs are out there, like Jericho (Sims) or Bobby. He’s like, ‘Come on, go get him! Go get him!’ And when I notice stuff like that, I realize it comes because when you’ve been around a winning culture for a lot of years, you create good habits. I don’t think he knows that he’s doing it, but we notice because it’s something new for us.”
Giannis and Myles are so locked in. pic.twitter.com/ri4whN4N6Z
— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) October 13, 2025
After two years of some of the most intense battles between NBA teams, Turner’s selfless leadership has quickly endeared him to his new squad and allowed him to seamlessly transform from bitter rival to trusted teammate. The most competitive, longest-tenured guys on the team see his value in Milwaukee — even if they’re still doing the same double-takes as Turner on media day.
“It’s been fun playing with him. Still kind of weird just a little bit, but it’s fun though,” Portis said. “His will, you can tell that he wants to win. He wants to be a part of something special, and I’m happy he’s on our side.”
