Indiana Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton is having an incredible start to his fourth season in the NBA with career-highs across the board. After every game, it feels like there’s three new bonkers statistics unearthed that put his historically great play into context.
Most recently he put up 32 assists with zero turnovers in his last two games. No one has ever had that many assists with zero turnovers in consecutive games.
Diving into Haliburton’s statistical profile right now is like digging for treasure in the Cave of Wonders in Aladdin or in Scrooge McDuck’s vault. Literally everything is gold.
After sifting through stats pages from numerous outlets, allow me to present the top-15 statistics from Haliburton through his first 10 games of the season that explain exactly why Basketball Reference’s NBA MVP Award Tracker currently has him as a top-3 MVP candidate behind only Nikola Jokić and Joel Embiid.
1. The Indiana Pacers have the highest offensive rating in the league at 122.2.
That number would be the best offensive rating of any team ever if they can keep it that high all season. Obviously, the team’s offensive engine is Tyrese Haliburton. Haliburton leads the NBA with the highest individual offensive rating.
This is not really an individual stat as it just measures the team’s overall offensive rating with that player on the court. It’s why the Pacers have three other players currently in the top-10 in the league in that category: Bruce Brown, Myles Turner, and Jalen Smith. However, it’s clear that Haliburton is the reason for the team’s offensive juggernaut status and those players are in the top 10 because of how much they play with him.
PBP Stats has Haliburton’s ORTG at 127.8. So the Pacers are playing like the best offense of all time by a mile when he’s on the floor. Statmuse has Haliburton’s offensive rating as the 3rd-highest of all time.
As a team, the Pacers have the highest effective field-goal percentage in the league, the highest true-shooting percentage in the league, and the most assists per game in the league with the second lowest turnover-percentage.
2. Tyrese Haliburton is currently averaging 12.5 assists per game. No one has averaged more than 12 over a full season since 1993-1994.
Not only does that lead the league by a full two assists per game, but he would be accomplishing something that hasn’t been done in 30 years when John Stockton last did it. In total only 5 players have ever accomplished the feat: Stockton (8 times), Magic Johnson (6 times), Isiah Thomas, Kevin Johnson, and Kevin Porter.
And none of them did it while averaging as many points as Haliburton (24.7) and all played more minutes per game than him (33.7). It’s a long season but he’s started the year at a historically great pace.
These are the closest to come to getting 12 assists per game in the current century: Russell Westbrook in 2020-21 (11.7), Rajon Rondo in both 2015-16 and 2011-12 (11.7), Steve Nash in 2006-07 (11.6), and Chris Paul in 2007-08 (11.6).
3. Per Cleaning the Glass, if a team played as well as the Pacers do with Tyrese Haliburton on the court for an 82-game season, the expected win total for that team would be 63 wins.
This is in the 90th percentile for Cleaning the Glass at a net efficiency of +10.4. The On/Off differential is drastic. Without Haliburton on the court, the Pacers have played like a 15-win team. With it being early in the season, that blowout Celtics loss with no Haliburton is probably causing a lot of noise here but that huge +48 expected wins differential is in the 97th percentile as the team is +23.2 points per 100 possessions better with Haliburton on the court than off.
4. Haliburton isn’t just in the 50/40/90 club so far. He’s very comfortably clearing each threshold.
52.8% overall. 43.6% from 3. 93.2% from the line.
No player among the nine that have entered the 50/40/90 club has ever matched or exceeded each of those three percentages that Haliburton sits at currently. This speaks to how insanely hot he has been overall to start the season even with him struggling from deep in the first few games.
5. In the last 40 years, Haliburton is the only player to have at least 110 assists and fewer than 25 turnovers in his first 9 games per Basketball Reference. And then he added 15 assists and zero turnovers to those totals in the next game.
While averaging that ridiculous 12.5 assists per game with countless no-look passes with plenty of flair, he’s also 4th in the league in Assist-to-Turnover Ratio at 6:1.
No one else in the top-10 averages more than 5 assists per game or has anything close to his scoring responsibilities.
6. Haliburton is shooting 72.2% overall (8 for 11) and 80% from 3 (4 for 5) in the clutch so far this season. Pacers have a +34 net rating during his clutch minutes (less than five minutes remaining with the score within 5 points in either direction).
7. Haliburton is tied for 14th in scoring at 24.7 points per game. He has the fourth-highest effective field-goal percentage (63.2%) among the top-50 scorers in the league and the 3rd-highest catch & shoot percentage among the top-50 at 58.8%.
8. While leading the league in assists and scoring the 14th-most points per game, Haliburton has the 82nd-highest usage rate in the league at 24%, according to NBA.com.
9. Haliburton creates the most points per game via assists at 33.6 per game. This is seven more points than second place.
10. In less than four seasons, Haliburton already has the 4th-most 15 assist and zero turnover games in NBA history. And he just had two of these games in a row.
11. Per Cleaning the Glass, Haliburton is in the 97th percentile in PSA (points per 100 shot attempts) at 138.8 and he’s in the 100th percentile with an assist percentage of 49.4%. This means that when a teammate scores a basket with Haliburton on the floor, it’s nearly a 50/50 chance that he was assisted by Haliburton. It’s the highest by over 6%.
12. Haliburton’s PER currently sits at 29.7. This would be the highest PER by any Pacers player ever. Haliburton holds the franchise record currently with a PER of 23.5. It’s the third-highest in the NBA this season.
13. Per Basketball Reference, Haliburton has the second-highest Offensive Box Plus/Minus at 10.4. In first place is Nikola Jokic at 10.5. Haliburton is tied for second in VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) with Stephen Curry and Joel Embiid. Jokic, once again, is first.
14. Per Caitlin Cooper, Haliburton has thrown 149 passes in the last two games without a turnover.
15. Haliburton is one of only five players ever to have 30 points, 15 assists, and zero turnovers in a game. He’s keeping pretty good company.
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