Pacers’ Rick Carlisle Reveals Potential Bold Plan to Replace Myles Turner

The Indiana Pacers will begin their 2025-26 Eastern Conference defense without two key starters: point guard Tyrese Haliburton — out for the year with an Achilles tendon tear — and center Myles Turner — now on the Milwaukee Bucks.

But Indiana still doesn't know who will be Turner's full-time starting replacement between returning bigs Isaiah Jackson, James Wiseman, and training camp invitee Tony Bradley, plus trade acquisition Jay Huff.

Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle recently hopped on with hosts Kevin Bowen, Jeff Rickard and James Boyd on 107.5 The Fan Indiana's "The Fan Morning Show" to discuss the departure of Turner, the front office's subsequent acquisition of Huff, and his intentions for the center position in 2025-26.

"He's moved on, it's a division rival, there's always going to be plenty to talk about there," Carlisle said. "But Kevin [Pritchard] and Chad [Buchanan] were able to acquire Jay Huff, who's certainly not the experience level Myles Turner, not the exact kind of player, but he can make 3's, he can protect the rim, and he can do some other things that are strengths of his."

Huff enjoyed a breakout season as Zach Edey's backup on the Memphis Grizzlies. The 7-foot-1 Virginia product appeared in 64 games for the Grizzlies (starting two), and averaged 6.9 points on .515/.405/.786 shooting splits, 2.0 rebounds, 0.9 blocks and 0.6 assists a night.

Carlisle's Surprising Plan for the Center Position

"We don't know exactly who's going to start at five, but I've had seasons where I've had three centers and pretty much consistently played three centers every game," Carlisle said. "I think it was 2013-14 with the Dallas Mavericks, I had Sam Dalembert as our starter, DeJuan Blair and Brendan Wright playing backup."

That Mavericks team, it should be noted, went 49-33 despite fielding a pretty mediocre roster around a fading Dirk Nowitzki, and pushed the eventual champion San Antonio Spurs to a stunning seven games in the first round.

And this was achieved with Dalembert as the club's starting five man, with Tyson Chandler having cashed in on his 2011 Mavericks champion to earn All-Star and Defensive Player of the Year honors with the New York Knicks.

"There were way more games than there weren't where all three of those guys played. So maybe the center position's more of a Swiss army knife-type thing. We'll have to see. But we have Huff, we have Isaiah Jackson Jackson, Wiseman, Tony Bradley's gonna be in camp. So there's four guys that are gonna be slugging it out for the presumably three center spots," Carlisle said.