Here’s a question: If you were shooting 29% from the field and zero percent from deep as the go-to guy, would you still trust yourself to take the final shot when your team needs you?
That’s the situation Tyrese Haliburton was in after missing his first 8 attempts from 3 in the Pacers season opening win against the Detroit Pistons with Indiana up by 3 with 42 seconds to go. After the Pacers used up some valuable seconds and the shot clock was winding down, the ball was swung to Haliburton who confidently faked a pass to the corner and hit his first 3-pointer of the night to ice the game by giving the team a 6-point lead.
This shot perfectly encapsulates Haliburton as a player. No matter the struggles, the prior misses, or the missed opportunities, every shot is essentially a clean slate, and with the game on the line, there is nobody you should trust more in the blue and gold taking the final shot than Number Zero. In 28 clutch situations in the 2023-24 season, Haliburton put up impressive splits of 52.6% from the field, 40% from deep, and 94.4% from beyond the arc. Going back to his Sacramento days, Haliburton has always been fond of the big moments and has never shied away from a potential game-winner or dagger in a team’s face, as shown multiple times in situations such as the In-Season Tournament against Milwaukee and Boston or the game winning floater against the Bucks in the playoffs. When a player has a reputation like that, you trust him with the game on the line, regardless of how many shots he’s missed.
“It ain’t my first bad shooting night, won’t be my last,” Haliburton told reporters after the game. “I just got to figure out ways to win the game in other ways. I felt like I turned it up defensively in the second half to help us win. Obviously, I would love to make more shots but that happens.”
Haliburton finished with 15 points on an inefficient 6 for 18 shooting night but did have one of the best defensive games of his career while adding a pair of blocks and three steals. But still in the clutch, he came through when it mattered most with his jumper. So many guys had good nights on the team but they still weren’t the closer providing the final nail in the coffin to a spunky Pistons team anxious to show they won’t just be walked all over this season: it wasn’t Pascal Siakam, with his 19 points on 8/15 shooting. It wasn’t Myles Turner, with his 20 points (16 in third quarter alone) on 7/14 shooting and 3/8 from deep. It wasn’t Bennedict Mathurin, who led the fourth-quarter comeback and finished with 19 points (14 in the final quarter) on 5/8 from the field and 2/3 from deep in his first basketball game in 232 days.
Haliburton had a surprising person to blame for his slow shooting start to the season: Steph Curry, the greatest shooter of all time.
“Honestly speaking, I’m probably going to blame Steph,” Haliburton said of his Olympics teammate. “He convinced me to try out pregame naps, because I told him I don’t nap. And he told me to try it out and text him after the game to see the result. So he’ll be getting a text from me shortly. No more pregame naps for Tyrese but we figured it out, that’s the good thing.”
Oh, and about his dance at the end of the dagger? You’re gonna have to bear with me here. There’s this father/son duo on TikTok called the Costco guys, made up of AJ and Big Justice, who have a signature dance called the “BOOM!” Apparently, Tyrese Haliburton is a big fan of the “BOOM,” which led to him mimicking the dance following his dagger, with TJ McConnell even hyping him up.
No, I didn’t think I’d be putting that in an article either, but here we are. The NBA is a funny place, isn’t it?
In the first half, while Detroit embarrassed Indiana, led by Tobias Harris’ 13 points on 6/9 shooting, Haliburton struggled mightily in his first NBA game in 154 days as the Pacers trailed by 9 at halftime. He finished the half with only four points on a jarring 2/10 from the field and a downright putrid 0/5 from deep. Nothing seemed to fall, and while he showed some defensive improvement with his increased effort on that end, his passiveness returned in strides, and when he shot the ball, he was ineffective.
Haliburton barely picked up the slack in the third quarter, scoring another four points on 2/3 shooting. Indiana’s third quarter was led mainly by Myles Turner, who exploded for 16 points on 6/8 shooting and 3/5 from deep in the period, injecting some much-needed life into the team heading into the final 12 minutes.
The fourth quarter wasn’t much different for Haliburton, as he only had four points on 1/5 shooting and 0/2 from deep in the first 11 minutes until the clinching shot. Indiana’s late-game surge and comeback win was led mainly by TJ McConnell, who ignited the offense with his patented leaning jumpers and driving finishes, and Bennedict Mathurin, who scored 14 points in the fourth quarter on a perfect 3/3 from the field and 7/9 from deep, bringing back that ability to draw contact that made Pacers fans salivate in his first two years.
In the end, Haliburton answered the age-old question: Would you rather finish 0-for-30 from the field, which meant your confidence was as high as possible for your entire time on the floor, or 0-for-9, which meant you lost your confidence and stopped shooting altogether? As former NBA player and Syracuse legend Dion Waiters famously stated in 2017, “I’d rather go 0-for-30 than 0-for-9 because you go 0-for-9 that means you stopped shooting. That means you lost confidence.” Well Haliburton didn’t get up 30 attempts from deep but he wasn’t hesitant with the game on the line and brought the boom (baby).
As we look ahead to the next few games of the season, we can all hope that Tyrese Haliburton gets his mandatory eight hours of sleep before every game and does not have to resort to naps to recharge his batteries. Of all the advice the greatest shooter in NBA history can give you, Haliburton just so happened to get the one piece that didn’t work for him.
Speaking of naps, Naptown is buzzing again as the Pacers are 1-0 to start the season. Despite some rough patches, the Pacers look ready to take on the rest of the NBA as they face a much bigger challenge on Friday in a rematch of the 2024 Eastern Conference Semifinals with the new-look New York Knicks in Madison Square Garden where the Pacers ended their season in Game 7. Let’s hope Tyrese Haliburton figures out his sleep schedule before Friday’s showdown on ESPN because the squad needs him to be on fire all game to have a chance to beat Jalen Brunson and company and prove they are still the better team.
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