I love the Indiana Pacers. I don’t think many people have ever written that sentence—I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it written on paper. My dad’s side of the family is from Indiana, where basketball is probably the biggest sport, next to auto racing. The inventor of basketball, James Naismith, once said, “Basketball really had its origin in Indiana, which remains the center of the sport.”
The Indiana Pacers—which, for anyone who does not know, is a team in the National Basketball Association—have been literally average for their entire history. Their win-loss record across their entire existence to today—March 25, 2024—is 2350 wins and 2252 losses (this includes their ABA record, but we don’t really need to get into all that). 57 years in existence and they have won 51% of their games. That winning percentage is 13th best of all current NBA teams. There are 30 current NBA teams.
In my lifetime, it’s been slightly better. Their winning percentage is up to a solid 53%. The most iconic moments I can remember are a fight that got so out of hand that multiple players and fans were charged with assault and battery (seriously, it’s insane—if you have no idea what I’m talking about, look up “Malice at the Palace” and watch what happened) and losing to Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, and LeBron James. This isn’t fair, though. Many fans haven’t even seen their favorite team make it to an NBA Finals, or be so consistent—but that’s sort of the point. There’s an identity in excellence, and in mediocrity, but not so much in blandness.
Boring consistency has been the name of the game. The Pacers have had only one true icon as basketball has exploded into a global sport: Reggie Miller. Maybe you can add Jermaine O’Neal, Danny Granger, and Paul George. I loved watching all of them in their primes, but none were on the level of Reggie Miller. Honestly, the list of very white, very tall centers that have played on the Pacers over the last 25 years is a lot longer: Rik Smits, Brad Miller, Jeff Foster, Josh McRoberts, T.J. Leaf, Austin Croshere. That’s just a sample.
This long wind-up is all to say that things have changed. In August 2014, Pacers forward Paul George shattered his tibia and fibula. The Pacers had just made back-to-back Eastern Conference finals. Paul George finished ninth in MVP voting and had clearly made the jump from solid player to legit star. Now, if the people who designed and built UNLV’s basketball court had decided to move the base stanchion of the hoop back a few inches, none of the rest of this would exist. It’s crazy to me that a decision probably made in a matter of a second created a ripple effect that massively changed individual lives and the entire NBA. Small things make a big difference!
The Pacers team that seemed like it was on the cusp of something bigger stalled out. As Paul George was rehabbing and then eventually made his way back on the court, the team missed the playoffs and then lost in the first round the next two years. Off the court, the media was speculating for years about George’s unhappiness, his unwillingness to sign a contract extension, and his clear desire to be traded from Indiana. Paul George was traded in the summer of 2017 to the Oklahoma City Thunder in exchange for shooting guard Victor Oladipo and power forward Domantas Sabonis. Oladipo and Sabonis led the team to some highs, but never made it past the first round of the playoffs. So, this identity of stability, of a small-market team that did well, but never that well, carried on. Again, it could be worse. But, where’s the excitement? The possibility of something greater? Any hope of a real chance to win a championship?
Even though Sabonis’s stock and play were at an all-time high, the Pacers were well below .500 and had no shot at even making the playoffs. Trade rumors circled like vultures. So they did it. On February 8, 2022, the Pacers traded Domantas Sabonis for Buddy Hield and someone who quickly became my lord and saving grace: Tyrese Haliburton.
Everything in my life is better because of Tyrese Haliburton. I wake up happier, the grass during the winter is still green, and the sun even shines a little stronger each day.
Once Tyrese arrived in Indiana, everything changed. The greatest Pacers teams in my lifetime were known for their intensity and hard-nosed defense. This team is constant showtime. They average the most points per game in the entire league and are the second fastest-paced team this season. They’ve had games where they’ve tallied 157, 152, and 150 points. 18 times this season, they’ve scored 130 points or more. That is not normal. Offense is on the rise in the NBA, but this is something different. This is a catalyst coming in and completely redirecting and re-energizing a dormant franchise.
In 2019, NBA writer/scout Jonathan Tjarks wrote of Haliburton, “The best players in the NBA all need the ball. Haliburton is one of the rare guys who can be great without it. A player like that makes everyone around him better. It has been that way his entire life. That won’t change once he gets to the league.” Which is only more true today. Tyrese lives to share the ball with his teammates, to get it in his hands and then immediately get it out to someone else, and it raises the energy of the entire team. Haliburton said it himself: “I think this style of basketball is exciting for people and makes it more fun for everybody involved…My job is to make sure everybody eats…If dudes make sacrifices for me, I’ve gotta be able to give ‘em a bone here and there.”
There are so many basketball players who are undeniably great. There are a select few, though, who are more than just great, who elevate the players around them as well. Many basketball fans will probably rattle off names like Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Nikola Jokić, and Steph Curry, to name just a few. Haliburton, albeit not yet on the level of any of those players, does just that. Jordan was famously unapologetic in his hagiography, the miniseries The Last Dance, saying essentially that he holds no regret for how brutally he treated his teammates because it pushed them to be great. And, fine, he won six championships and is considered the greatest of all time. I think the ends justified the means.
Watch Haliburton play, though, and try not to see the joy on his teammates’ faces. Head coach Rick Carlisle said, “He sees the connection with lightning-fast ball movement, teammate engagement, and the positive impact of getting the ball back live.” Tyrese lives to make plays and include others. I can’t know this for a fact, but I’ve watched him play enough that I think Tyrese cares just as much about getting an assist and his teammates scoring as he does about getting his own. And his teammates feed off of it. Haliburton, who just turned 24, is the clear leader of this team. This team starts, goes, and ends with him and they know it and enjoy it. To have your franchise lodestar be such a young talent, and seemingly only inject exuberance and joy into the franchise and their fellow teammates, instead of breeding petty jealousies over attention, feels pretty unusual and makes Tyrese all the easier to root for.
And Haliburton makes plays in the same vein as some of the assist forefathers: Jason Williams, Magic Johnson, Steve Nash, etc. No looks, transition alley-oops, drive and kick outs, swing passes, full-court heaves, even a pass to himself off the backboard to then still mid-air pass it to an open teammate in the corner. It’s exciting, it’s what the future of basketball can and should be: a mixed breed of past point guard legends; offensive floor generals with vision for passing windows that no one else sees; and the point guards of the future, run and gunners who won’t stop ‘til their team hits 200 points in a game.
Tyrese currently leads the NBA in assists per game. He has almost as many games of 15+ assists this season as games with fewer than 10 assists. He is the epitome of a star player who gets more out of an assist than he does scoring on his own. I could keep listing accolades or impressive feats. He’s had multiple consecutive games this year with zero turnovers, he broke the NBA record for most assists (32) without a turnover, and last season he was the first player to go an entire season averaging 20 points a game, 10 assists a game, and shooting 40% from three-point range. On December 28, he scored 21 points, had 21 assists, and zero turnovers, the first player to do so since Chris Paul did it in 2016. Two nights later, in Indiana’s next game, he did it again, scoring 22 points and dishing out 23 assists. Only two other players have had two games in a row of 20+ points and 20+ assists: John Stockton and Magic Johnson. Pretty good company to be in. If you want to get extremely stat-head nerdy about it, we can go there too: at the All-Star break, despite just turning 24 years old and playing in a league with giants and multiple-time MVPs, he is 7th in Player Efficiency Rating, 5th in Offensive Win Shares, 3rd in Points Created per 36 minutes, and on and on and on.
Regardless of success or whatever quantifier you choose (because stats are for nerds), you can just look with your eyes and see it plain as day: Tyrese Haliburton is a star on the verge of exploding into a supernova. (That’s how it works, right?) It’s remarkable. There is an echelon of NBA players who are good, but maybe not the level of good that you can base your entire team around and seriously believe you have a chance at winning a championship. This, in NBA circles, is commonly referred to as a “1B” type player. Being a 1B player is a great accomplishment! It means you’re probably somewhere between a top 10 to top 30 player in the entire league. But every fan who has a 1B player as the best player on their team knows in their heart of hearts they’re not going to win a championship. The two best Pacers of my lifetime, Reggie Miller and Paul George, are 1B players, and they came incredibly close to bringing a championship to Indiana, but I never really, truly thought it was possible.
Tyrese isn’t a 1B. He is blossoming into a 1A before our very eyes. He has the potential to lead the Pacers to a championship. For the first time, I can really see it. Like, I can actually close my eyes and picture it and not feel like there is any part of me lying to myself. Reggie Miller even said it himself: “His teammates…look at him like they look at LeBron…Jokić…Giannis. Like, we can do anything with this dude out there. And I see that…I really do believe that he can carry this team to a championship.” We have something! There’s more than just bland stability. I guess this is about when potential intersects with reality, and how that may be one of the best feelings in the entire world. When every lofty unreasonable goal you had actually seems in reach. (Of course, since I started writing this, the Pacers are in a bit of a tailspin and Tyrese had his worst game as a Pacer. I pretend I do not see it.)
Indiana can be for some and not for others. That’s fine. It’s the Midwest, it’s cold, there’s plenty to do, but maybe not everything in terms of flash and cool that seems attractive to young millionaires. NBA players and smaller markets have had their ups and downs, and as the players continue to use their skills to leverage themselves into their preferred teams and cities, you’ve generally seen fewer star players signing in free agency with small-market teams. Members of the basketball media say it often: Oh well if you’re Detroit or Oklahoma City or xyz, no player is gonna sign for you so you have to cultivate through the draft. This past summer, Tyrese Haliburton signed a mega-contract extension with Indiana. Maybe I just drank the Kool-Aid a little too easily. Maybe in 2027, Tyrese will request a trade out of Indiana and this will all be null and void, but he’s said that he wants to finish his career as a Pacer and bring a championship to Indiana. In an interview with Andscape, he said, “But I feel like I’m obligated, at the same time, to protect this organization. And I’m a part of this long-term. I hope to be a part of this for the rest of my career. So, it’s just a natural fit for me and it just feels like home. Everything feels like home.” That means a lot to fans when you have other people in the NBA world making fun of Indiana. He says he wants to build something with the Pacers, and he feels like the type of person to mean it. It creates a real bond.
Tyrese and Indiana are a perfect match, too. Tyrese, from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, was a three-star recruit in high school, which basically means people didn’t think much of his prospects. He wasn’t heavily recruited to play basketball at the higher levels of Division I—you know, the Kansases, Dukes, Kentuckys of the world never really came calling—so he committed to play at Iowa State. His own mother thought he was going to have to redshirt (slang for repeating a year) as a freshman. At Iowa State, his star began to shine, people saw the vision of what Tyrese could become, and now here we are today. Fans are so easily able to connect with Tyrese because of his story, given that he was underestimated and has that classic chip-on-his-shoulder, we-have-to-prove-we’re-worthy attitude that many Midwesterners feel.
Some of my best memories of visiting Indiana when I was younger were basketball-related. Going to the NCAA Hall of Champions. Spending time downtown when the Final Fours are in town. Maybe my favorite sports experience ever was in May 2004, when I was lucky enough to go to the Indianapolis 500—probably Indiana’s longest and most notorious event/tradition as a state—and Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals between the Indiana Pacers and the Detroit Pistons in the same day. The Indy 500 was historic; the race was shortened because there was an F2 tornado (a “Significant Tornado,” as the National Weather Service calls it) just six miles away from the race track.
Fast-forward to this past February, and I probably had my new favorite memory: attending NBA All-Star Weekend in Indianapolis with my dad. It was freezing just to walk ten minutes from the arena, where we watched practice, to the convention center, where they had events and booths going on all weekend. I felt like Kurt Russell at the end of The Thing. But it was awesome, to get to share that weekend with my dad and to see his passion for the Pacers. I learned about how he used to go to Pacers games on weeknights with his dad when he was a kid. It felt like passing down family history.
If anyone was the star of All-Star Weekend, when the eyes of the NBA world and some of the general public were focusing on the league, it was Tyrese Haliburton. Haliburton’s star shone bright on and off the court. He should’ve been the All-Star Game MVP, but who cares? After All-Star Weekend, the Athletic wrote an article titled, “Tyrese Haliburton’s rise validated by All-Star praise.” It was basically quotes from across the league recognizing Tyrese’s ascendancy to one of the stars of the NBA. In the article, Hall of Famer—and Kazaam himself—Shaquille O’Neal said, “I wouldn’t put him up there with Steph [Curry] and [Kevin Durant], but he’s on the right path. [In] four or five years, when those guys are gone, the league should belong to him.” A face of the league? In Indiana? The fact that it is even a remote possibility is thrilling, and that it’s Tyrese is even more thrilling. The Pacers are at the precipice of something special, I can feel it.
It isn’t just Tyrese Haliburton that makes this moment so exciting as a Pacers fan. With the Haliburton trade, the Pacers started to focus on youth and rebuilding. Besides Myles Turner, who was drafted by the Pacers at 19 years old and just turned 28, the longest-tenured player on this team is power forward Isaiah Jackson, who’s only in his third year in the league. As mentioned, this team is a group of young players, hungry to prove themselves, each with their own special skill they bring to the table. Go down the roster, look at their birthdays, and you’ll see a cadre of guys whose birth year starts with the number 2 instead of 1. A shiver goes down my spine. I am not old, but I’m old.
There’s Obi Toppin, who’s been the one finishing a lot of Tyrese Haliburton’s highlight-reel assists. Andrew Nembhard, the second-round pick with low expectations that’s now become a key starter. Aaron Nesmith, a two-way wing who has continued to grow as an offensive player this year. Bennedict Mathurin, your classic shooting guard who on any given night can drop 30 points, and who some might call the real symbol of this Pacers era (he was the first-round draft pick in 2022 when they first started rebuilding). This doesn’t even begin to mention my two favorite big men, Jalen Smith and Isaiah Jackson, or the rookie Ben Sheppard who is proving to be more and more important with each game. Shoutout to Ben for his stop on RJ Barrett to win them the game against the Raptors on February 14, 2024. Moments like that matter for a rookie and their confidence, and it was exciting to see him get that spotlight. And last but not least, I would be remiss if I did not wax poetic for a moment about T.J. McConnell. T.J. is multiple basketball clichés packed into one. He is the classic NBA veteran, who’s been on a few teams and seen it all. He’s the team player who knows his role and is beloved by his teammates. And he has been the stereotypical, scrappy, “spark plug” white guard since his college days at Arizona. All of these players have ups and downs, none of them are all-stars, but again potential is beautiful. When one player is down, the rest of the team has them covered.
The nights when the whole team is clicking, though, are the most fun. Although Tyrese is the leader and the star player on the team, they don’t just live and die with him. This team has depth. Their bench unit is/was one of the best, if not the best, in the NBA. If a team has five players that average at least ten points per game, it usually means they’re a solid, well-balanced offense. Six is impressive. If the Pacers maintain this same pace, they’ll have seven, and if either Andrew Nembhard or T.J. McConnell can just increase their average by a point, they’ll be only the fourth team in NBA history to have eight. They’re the only team to have nine double-digit scorers in a game this year, on top of the fact that they’ve had five games with at least eight players scoring double figures this season, the most by any team this year. The Pacers lead the league in assists per game at nearly 31, which would be the third-highest average in NBA history. The Pacers’ strength isn’t just their star power, it’s their support system around Haliburton. Basketball is one of the ultimate team sports; everyone can share the ball, everyone can have a defined role and contribute to success, and basketball is at its peak when a team is capable of doing that night after night. Look no further than last season’s champions, the Denver Nuggets. They had two-time MVP Nikola Jokić making absurd plays, but only last season when they finally were able to get the complementary role-players around Jokić did they reach the top of the mountain.
I use present tense when talking about the Pacers’ depth, but in the process of writing this piece, things have gotten a little complicated. On January 17, 2024, the Pacers traded away two of their key depth pieces, Bruce Brown and Jordan Nwora, and three first-round draft picks to the Toronto Raptors for two-time All-Star Pascal Siakam. On February 8, the Pacers also traded Buddy Hield to the Philadelphia 76ers. In her column after the Siakam trade, basketball writer Caitlin Cooper wrote, “Perhaps this latest run-in between the four and the five…will eventually mark the end of what has been this quasi-beginning, when Haliburton is finally able to play fully as himself in combination with Turner and, more pressingly, the team’s second star in Siakam. Or, in looking ahead, the start of the actual start.” There comes a time when the potential rubber meets the real road, where the possibilities narrow. And it happened a little earlier than I expected. When you have low expectations, you of course are less likely to be disappointed if things go wrong. After the Pacers made the In-Season Tournament Finals (a made-up tournament but, nonetheless, it counts), I think many Pacers fans would have said that this year, no matter what happened going forward, felt like a massive win. The team has so far exceeded all hopes and appears to be on the right path. Making it to the playoffs, winning a few games, showing they had some fight in them—and therefore a bright future ahead—would’ve been icing on the cake. Now, though, that’s not enough. With a second star on the team, a few wins in the first round of the playoffs would feel fine, but probably slightly disappointing if I’m being honest. I don’t expect the Pacers to win a first-round matchup, but with two star players, they kind of need to in order to make this trade worth sacrificing some of that depth. With the Siakam trade came the implication that the Pacers wanted to compete in the Eastern Conference much sooner than initially expected.
Now, rushing that timeline just makes all the feelings more complicated. That potential intersecting with reality is a lot more frightening because the balance in the equation has tilted over to reality, and so far reality has not been pretty. Since the Siakam trade, the Pacers have a record of 16-15, certainly not the boost from play-in tournament team to the four-or-five-seed in the East they were hoping for (I assume). Each loss feels like an identity crisis. The Pacers have had confounding losses with minimal effort, and just seem in a funk. They’re in a fight with four other teams for the middle of the Eastern Conference, and while they’re healthier than most of them, they have the hardest remaining schedule of the bunch. As of this writing, in the last two weeks alone the Pacers have lost to the Spurs (who have the third-worst record in the entire league), they’ve lost in overtime to a middling Chicago Bulls team, Bennedict Mathurin has had season-ending shoulder surgery, and Tyrese is in the worst slump of his time in Indiana. His three-point shooting percentage has seemingly fallen off a cliff. Trolls on the internet are starting to creep out of their caves to take shots at him, saying that the first half of this season was just a fluke. At times, the offense seems to run through Pascal more than Tyrese and has lost its flow. After losing to the Cleveland Cavaliers, Head Coach Rick Carlisle said, “I’m tired of talking about how we’ve gotta learn from this…It’s time for us to have learned these lessons about being able to maintain intensity, focus, attention to detail, the importance of defense, all that kind of stuff.” The same day, the Athletic wrote a piece titled “Tyrese Haliburton, Pacers must decide what team they want to be as playoffs approach,” which ended with “The Pacers came up empty-handed Monday, and if they want to end their three-year playoff drought, they can’t afford to come up empty-handed too much longer.” See, the potential is dwindling and real-life pressure is skyrocketing! I don’t like it.
Then, every once in a while, they seem to be the gloriously fun team we fell in love with. Also in the last two weeks, the Pacers have started to shore up their defense and beat the Dallas Mavericks, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Orlando Magic on the road—all teams with winning percentages better than or equal to the Pacers. If you dig deeper, too, there’s hope; their record against teams above .500 (as in good teams) is much better than other teams around them in the standings, suggesting that they are capable of playing with the real competitors. ESPN’s, the Ringer’s, and Basketball Reference’s playoff projections have them as the six seed, meaning they would not be in the play-in tournament, which would feel like a marginal victory. And if they get the sixth seed, there’s a good chance they’ll be facing their new rivals the Milwaukee Bucks (who treat the Pacers like a little brother despite being 1-4 against them this year) in a first-round matchup, and from there who knows what can happen.
There still feels like a little bit of potential oxygen, I just don’t want to lose this excitement. Sports fandom waxes and wanes. It’s only natural. One season your favorite team sucks and you’re just a little more checked out. The next, maybe they’re not. I think my brother is tired of me texting him at 12:30 every night “Pa-cers,” but I will not waver. This season, this team, and Tyrese Haliburton feel different. It feels, at its best, like grabbing onto the third rail and having electricity course through your veins. I don’t want to lose that. As long as I have Tyrese Haliburton to root for, I don’t think I will.
Leave a Reply