Naz Reid ruined Pacers' hardball negotiations

Longtime Pacers center Myles Turner signed with the Milwaukee Bucks in a shocking deal that required the Bucks to waive and stretch Damian Lillard and his massive contract. Turner got almost $27M per season, which is significantly more than the $23M per year the Pacers reportedly offered their big man.

Turner's contract would have forced Indiana to pay the luxury tax for the first time in two decades, but the team seemed willing to keep its NBA Finals team together, even after Tyrese Haliburton's Achilles tear in Game 7.

But the Pacers underestimated the market for centers during their exclusive negotiating period with Turner before free agency began. They may have thought $23M was enough to bring back Turner, but that was before news broke of Naz Reid's five-year, $125M deal to return to the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Reid is a backup center who scored 14.2 points per game last season and shot 37.9 percent on three-pointers. Turner was the starter on an NBA Finals team who scored 15.6 points per game and shot 39.6 percent on threes, while blocking two shots per game. Once Reid got $25M per season, Turner reasonably considered $23M less than what he deserved, and ESPN reported Reid's deal "complicated" Turner's negotiations.

Perhaps Indiana wanted to minimize the luxury tax it'd pay. More likely, it never anticipated Milwaukee taking a $23M dead-money hit for five seasons just to poach Turner. But it needed to at least match the annual value of Reid's deal for Turner to stay in Indianapolis.

Now, the Pacers may take a "gap year" while they wait for Haliburton to heal up and cobble together their center position among the bargain-bin free agents available. But trying to get a bargain on their player seems to have blown up in their faces, and the whopping deal for Reid lit the fuse.