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It was a busy summer for Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner who traveled to China with Team USA to participate in the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019.
While that campaign wasn't the greatest, the experience of playing internationally certainly counts. Speaking of playing internationally, the Pacers are all set to face off against the Sacramento Kings in two preseason games as part of the NBA India Games 2019.
Turner will be entering his fifth season in the NBA this year and was available to answer a few questions on the eve of the two games slated to be held on October 4th and 5th at the NSCI Dome in Mumbai, India.
As mentioned earlier, the experience of playing for your country definitely counts and Turner had the opportunity to work with multi-NBA championships winning coaches in Gregg Popovich and Steve Kerr. He explained what that was like:
"The experience being with them was incredible. They're two of the best basketball minds in the game. They're two great coaches and great guys as well."
Earlier on during the day, head coach Nate McMillan had mentioned how he felt that the Pacers needed to rebound better. Turner delved into how the team is preparing for that.
"With our roster changes we have guys that are bigger, more athletic, so rebounding shouldn't be much of an issue this year. We're committing ourselves too so it should be better."
Turner thinks that the two games are really important as far as the development of the sport of basketball in general and the NBA in particular in India is concerned. He feels there's a lot to take away from these two games. He elucidated:
"Basketball's growing internationally. I feel like when the kids are here and they see professionals who they look up to actually playing in front of them, it might be inspiring, maybe they'll want to go out there and do it themselves."
"I think they must take away that NBA basketball is exciting, it's something that you can watch. There's so many games night in, night out, something you can watch all the time, something you can immerse yourself into. There's your favorite player, favorite team, just taking away that basketball is fun to be a part of."
The Pacers have seven new players on their roster and a trip to India can help a lot as far as team bonding is concerned to get the chemistry going. Turner concurred with this notion as he added:
"Off the floor, we have to hang out with each other. We're kinda all we got out here. It's different when you're back in Indiana. You have the respect of home, you have the respect of families. But we're out here with each other so the bond, the bonding, becomes greater once you're spending this much time together."
Myles Turner finally summed up by talking about what the feeling was like, getting to know that the Pacers would be playing in India.
"I was just talking to my parents about that the other day. It's just amazing what a little orange ball can do for you. It's taking me places I never would've imagined. My first thought, I was impressed because, one, it's something that's never been done before and two when you think of basketball you don't necessarily think of India. I was excited to bring the game of basketball to India itself, to be one of the first people to do it."
