Self-awareness may be Tyrese Haliburton’s greatest attribute. That was obvious at last summer’s Olympics as the 25-year-old All-Star was confined to the Team USA bench.
Instead of hitting out at online fans who kept tabs on Indiana Pacers star’s smiles, high fives and other displays of team spirit to make up for his lack of on-court statistics, Haliburton seized on the chance to dunk on himself. After the US pipped France in the final, Haliburtonposted a selfie with his gold medal. “When you ain’t do nun on the group project and still get an A,” he wrote.
This year, however, Haliburton has proved that he’s no joke. His late-game heroics are the main reason why the Indiana Pacersare just two wins from the NBA title. Time and again during these playoffs Haliburton has snatched the Pacers back from what had looked like certain defeat – and with every M Night Shyamalan twist he orchestrates on court, he shows that no moment is ever too big for him.
Where another player might struggle to addoneclutch playoff bucket to his highlight reel, Haliburton has made a game-tying or game-winning shot inevery round of this year’s postseason– a heady accomplishment only Reggie Miller, Haliburton’s Pacers archetype, can match. In the first round against Milwaukee, Haliburton beat Giannis Antetokounmpo for a layup to steal Game 5 in overtime and close the series. Late in Game 2 of the conference semi-finals versus Cleveland, Haliburtonsank a three-pointer off his own missed free-throwto stun the home crowd and take a 2-0 series lead. In the opening game of the conference finals, Haliburton not onlybounced in a buzzer-beater threeto force overtime against New York. He celebrated by grabbing his neck and reprisingMiller’s notorious choking gesturefrom the 1994 conference finals series, triggering Knicks fans all over again as Miller looked on approvingly. Then, in the Game 1 victory over the Thunder in the NBA finals, the Pacers achieved their only lead when Haliburtonhit the game’s last shotwith 0.3 seconds left to cap his team’s fifth comeback while trailing by 15 points or more these playoffs – the most since Miller’s Pacers stormed through the brackets in 1998.
Counting the regular season and the playoffs this year, Haliburton is a robust 86.7% onshots taken inside the final two minutes(including overtime) to tie or take the lead. The same fans who once joked about Haliburton’s smiles-per-game at the Olympics have shifted to likening his uncanny talent forupending win-probability trend linesto basketball terrorism. Nicknames for Haliburton on social media include The Haliban and, when he beat Thunder in Game 1 of the finals,Himothy McVeigh, a play onthe Oklahoma City bomber(It should go without saying that such wordplay is in questionable taste.)
All of this has put the league, already under fire for itsmuted NBA finals spectacle, in the unfortunate position of having toastroturfanother Haliburton nickname, The Moment, in hopes of stopping the more charged ones from spreading further. (Newsflash: it hasn’t caught on with fans.) That Haliburton has suddenly emerged as the man for the moment is a development few outside Indianapolis saw coming. At the Olympics, Haliburton struggled to break a Team USA point guard rotation that included all-time great shooter Steph Curry and Derrick White, the freshly minted NBA champion from the Boston Celtics.
Altogether, Haliburton sat out three of six games and played 26 total minutes in Paris – the fewest of anyone on the team. Speaking to ESPN’s Jamal Collierlast month, he’d call his Olympic experience an “ego check” and said the online jokes hurt. (The smile, it turns out, was just a cover.) “It got to the point where all that conversation was weighing on me in a negative way for the first time in my life, which was weird,” Haliburton said. “Basketball has always made me happy. And for the first time I wasn’t happy.” Adding to the insults: Haliburton was nursing a hamstring injury suffered during a Cinderella run through the 2024 playoffs that was cut short when the top-seeded Celtics swept the sixth-seeded Pacers in the conference finals.
The hits didn’t stop there. As the playoffs began in April, The Athletic asked NBA players who they considered the league’s most overrated player. With 158 anonymous replies (or more than a quarter of the locker room population), Haliburtonwon handily– with 14.4% of the vote – over Minnesota big man Rudy Gobert and Atlanta pest Trae Young. But Haliburton, who further confessed to learning a lot from how USA teammates Jayson Tatum (who also went overlooked in the Olympic rotation) and Joel Embiid handled criticism on their respective NBA squads, didn’t let the disrespect get him down this time. “I must be doing something right,” Haliburton said in response to the poll. “My focus is on this locker room and securing victories. I know who I am. I’m confident in myself and not concerned with what others think.”
Haliburton has shown as much throughout the season, wearing a goofy smile as he rips hearts out from coast to coast. All the while he has navigated the ancillary controversies around his game – from the NBA banning his father, John, from attending games as punishment fortaunting Antetokounmpo; to Haliburton himselfnearly upstagingPascal Siakam’s acceptance of the conference finals MVP award – with grace and maturity. “When we brought him here, we had a vision,” Haliburton said of Siakam, shrugging off his unwitting echo of a popular meme from apast NBA All-Star celebrity game. “We envisioned doing something like this, doing something special.” It just confirms what teammates already know about Haliburton: he’s not playing for the spotlight.
That was obvious again in the Pacers’ 116-107 victory over the Thunder on Wednesday night – a nip-tuck affair in which Haliburton made the difference with his defense and distribution of the ball, and Indiana’s benchcarried the day. In one late-game sequence, he managed to outfox Gilgeous-Alexander – a solid off-ball defender – in a clever half court set piece from the left elbow. Instead of dishing the ball off to a cutting Miles Turner, who only had SGA to beat in the lane, Haliburton fired the ball past Turner to Aaron Nesmith on the opposite wing – who thenburied a three over a wrongfooted Shai Gilgeous-Alexanderto give the Pacers an eight-point lead with three minutes left. No, the play wasn’t as sexy or as seismic as a Haliburton desperation heave. But there’s no doubt it was clutch.
“I mean, I was like three months old last time they made the finals,” Haliburton joked to NBA TV while considering the significance of helping the Pacers to their first finals trip first finals trip in 25 years. “As a group, every year we’ve taken a jump. We’re here now, and we don’t want to take this time for granted.” Now two wins from delivering the Pacers’ first ever NBA championship (they had previously won three titles in the defunct ABA), Haliburton is on the brink of turning a series thatbegan with low expectationsinto one that may forever live in NBA lore. It’s quite the turnabout for a player who seemingly couldn’t make the grade.