Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner has been in trade rumors linking him to the Los Angeles Lakers since 2021, and basically every season since, including the current, 2024-25 campaign. But after another NBA trade deadline came and went on Thursday, Turner is once again still a member of the reigning Eastern Conference Finals participants.
Turner has always demonstrated a humor and levity about the situation, with responses ranging to making his pitch on Woj’s podcast to get traded, to trying to get a date with a TikTok influencer out of the rumors.
This season was no different, as Turner tweeted a picture of the Survivor television show logo to indicate he had made it through another deadline without getting shipped out of Indiana:
It’s hard to blame Turner for cracking jokes given how funny it is that the Pacers and he are seemingly always willing to part ways, but no team has made a compelling enough offer to pry him away… yet. But there’s always next year.
And he wasn’t the only one have some fun with the situation, as NBA Twitter had some jokes about his near-yearly presence in trade rumors for the bulk of his career as well:
Myles Turner OWNS the trade deadline.
Drafted in 2015.
Arguably the most traded player in our site’s history.
SIXTH longest tenured player in the league.
TEN years in Indiana.
STILL a Pacer.
(h/t: @hoopsrumors) pic.twitter.com/lL4XO2ahBC
— Fanspo (@fanspo) February 6, 2025
At this point, this is officially one of the NBA’s funniest and longest-running bits, so I hope Turner and the Pacers keep it up for the rest of his career. The league won’t be the same after his final season, whenever that is, which I assume the Pacers will ring in by shopping him and then not trading him at one final deadline. He should get a statue in Indianapolis, but it’s just of a Shams Charania scoop graphic with a photo of him that says “SOURCES: Lakers interested in Myles Turner” on the bottom.
It would be a perfect tribute to a player who may go down as the trade machine GOAT.
