The start to the 2024-25 season for the Indiana Pacers has been akin to a cruel rollercoaster, starting at the small heights of a season-opening win against Detroit, sinking to the depths of terrible shooting and rebounding performances in three straight losses, rising to an early peak after a thriller overtime win against the defending champions, and currently sunk lower than ever before with a loss to a broken down New Orleans Pelicans team and two long-term injuries to key rotation players.

Currently, the Indiana Pacers are 2-4, which places them just inside Play-In territory as the 10th seed. It’s been a whirlpool of disaster early with plenty of team-wide issues but one glaring reason stands above the rest for the slow start: Tyrese Haliburton’s nightmare start to the year.

After flirting with MVP considerations for the first few months last season, Haliburton has looked like a shell of his former self, which may all be self-inflicted. While his playmaking is still incredibly valuable to the team, and he generates plenty of open shots for his teammates, he is not producing on the offensive end at an MVP level or even to the level of an All-Star, which he was for the last two years. Specifically, Haliburton hasn’t been able to get two feet in the paint with much frequency and score at the rim like he was before his hamstring injury, severely limiting his threat level on offense.

Through six games, Tyrese Haliburton, averaging just 14 points and 7.3 assists, has taken an average of 8.3 three-pointers per game, over half a three-pointer higher than his previous season average of 7.8 per game and two full shots higher than his career average of 6.3 per game. Additionally, Haliburton’s average shot distance this season has risen to 20.2 feet from the basket, which is almost three feet further than his 17.6 feet average from last season prior to the injury, which includes the second half of the season, where he exhibited similar tendencies. However, those tendencies have come full circle this year, with only 7% of Haliburton’s shots coming from 0-3 feet from the basket compared to 15.5% last year and 20.9% the year before. Overall, 58.1% of Tyrese Haliburton’s shot attempts this season have come from beyond the arc compared to 51% last season and only 47.8% the season prior.

According to the NBA’s tracking data, last season before the injury, Haliburton averaged 14.7 drives per game and passed out of those drives a little over half the time (51.6%). This season he’s down to only 11.2 drives per game and his pass percentage is up to nearly sixty percentage (59.7%). To make this matters worse, the increase in passes hasn’t led to more points for teammates early as his assist percentage on drives has been cut in half from 15.4% to 7.5% with less than one of his assists per game coming from a drive through these six games.

Coincidentally, through the first six games of this season, Haliburton has shot a paltry 37.7% from the field, with most of his shots coming from long distance, compared to 47.7% last season and a career-best 49% the season prior. What makes Haliburton’s lack of willingness to drive even more frustrating is that his shooting tendencies are not resulting in any measure of success, as he has shot only 24% from deep (12 for 50) this season, only making two of his 8.3 attempts per game, resulting in a career-low effective field goal percentage of 47.2% as well as a career-low true shooting percentage of 44.7% due to also shooting a career-low 77.8% from the free-throw line including multiple clutch free throws missed against the Sixers in another loss.

Through the beginning of the 2024-25 NBA season, Tyrese Haliburton has yet to shoot 50% from the field or beyond the arc and was held scoreless on national television against the New York Knicks in a 25-point loss where he only took eight shots. It was only the ninth game of his Pacers career where he was held under nine shots and only his second scoreless effort as a Pacer. Coincidentally, his tenth game under nine shots came only four games later against the New Orleans Pelicans, where he shot 2/8 from the field and 1/6 from deep, only taking 2 two-point shots, with only one being from inside the free-throw line. There were many instances during the Pelicans game or prior games where Haliburton had much slower big men on him and opted to move into a side-step three-pointer or jump pass out of a layup rather than take it inside himself. Of course, creating for others and opening up scoring opportunities for your teammates is great—24 potential assists in the Pelicans game—but as the Pacers star player, Indiana needs more scoring output from Haliburton to win games.

Of course, the NBA season is still young, and there is plenty of time for Haliburton to revert to the player Pacers fans fell in love with a season ago, but at this rate, he is not doing himself or his team any favors. Faith should never be lost in the man who led the Indiana Pacers to their first playoff series win in a decade and took the team to the Conference Finals in his first taste of playoff action. Still, Haliburton must pick it up sooner rather than later for the Pacers to clean up their record as games start stacking up and seeding starts to matter. They’re fortunate that some of their likely Eastern Conference competition hasn’t gotten off to the best starts either with the Milwaukee Bucks at just 1-5 and Philadelphia 76ers 1-4.

Outside of the blowout against New York, every Pacers loss so far has gone down to the wire and was thrown away during crunch time, either due to a lack of defense, careless turnovers, offensive creation, missed free throws, or a combination of them all. If the Pacers star was playing just a pinch better, things wouldn’t feel so dire. Instead, Tyrese Haliburton’s stats of 3.4 fourth-quarter points per game on 33.3% shooting have not done the team any favors in crunch time, especially compared to his 5.2 points per fourth-quarter on 46.9% from the field last season. He’s hit some big clutch shots including the 3-pointer to ice the game against the Pistons, a double clutch three to force overtime against the Sixers, and a critical mid-range attempt to put the Pacers up three against the Celtics, but he’s also committed bad turnovers and missed critical free throws that could have prevented late collapses. With two major rotation players shelved due to injuries in Aaron Nesmith and Isaiah Jackson, the pressure on Haliburton just ramped up to get the Pacers some crucial wins to get the team back on track. Thankfully, the Pacers’ initial hectic schedule has simmered down a bit, and with a few games coming up against injured or middling teams, now is as good a time as ever for Tyrese Haliburton to be back on his A-game and prove his doubters wrong yet again.