Before the Indiana Pacers blew the roof off of Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Game 6, before 2025 reared its grotesque head in Game 7 and cut yet another player down in his prime, before the Oklahoma City Thunder won the 2025 NBA title, there was Game 4. The Thunder eased to a 120-109 win as Tyrese Haliburton, bothered by a sore calf, had arguably his worst game of the series. Haliburton shot 0-6 and finished with four points, giving us 72 hours of talking heads debating whether Haliburton is a superstar and the need for him to step up. But three plays stuck with me over the ensuing three days, through Game 6, through the Greek tragedy of Game 7, and now as we survey the prospect of an entire season without Haliburton.
Here’s one. Off a live rebound, the Pacers push in transition as is their wont. This is against the Thunder, the league’s second best transition defense per Cleaning the Glass. And true to form, the Thunder have numbers tracking back; with both Alex Caruso and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander tracking Obi Toppin. The play ends with an uncontested Toppin alley-oop, but watch Haliburton the entire time.
As soon as SGA signals for Caruso to take Toppin, Haliburton crosses over, seemingly looking for Aaron Nesmith trailing on the wing. That moment of misdirection gets Caruso, one of the smartest defenders around, stepping the wrong way, opening up the oop opportunity. Haliburton’s decision there turns a promising fast break opportunity into a literal slam dunk. With Haliburton on the floor, the Pacers were adding nearly four more points per 100 in transition during the playoffs. That’s the Haliburton effect.
Here’s another. Off an offensive rebound, Haliburton hits Myles Turner in his shooting pocket in the corner.
That’s a perfect bullet pass, with his off hand, by the way. The Pacers weren’t just a run and gun offense; with Haliburton steering the ship, they put on one of the best half court offenses in the playoffs.
And the third play, a Haliburton-Pascal Siakam pick and roll. Again, watch Haliburton the entire time. Observe the minuscule decision-making, each micro-move perfectly engineered to create a high percentage look. With Lu Dort getting stuck momentarily on Siakam’s screen, one would expect Haliburton to attack Isaiah Hartenstein downhill. Instead, Haliburton pauses a beat and appears to gather, seemingly relinquishing the advantage and allowing Dort the opportunity to recover back onto Haliburton.
Misdirection again. That hesitation is Haliburton’s means of gathering for a pass towards the now-open Siakam.
This is where I mention that Haliburton led all pick and roll ball handlers in 2024-25 with 1.11 points per possession per Synergy data, just ahead of SGA.1 But with Haliburton, I am reminded of the (late) Wittgenstein exhortation to not think, but look. In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein posited that we box words in, ignorant to the diversity of their meanings. We fail to see their variety, said Wittgenstein, if we do not look and see.
Take our understanding of what it is to be a superstar in the NBA. We think of a superstar as looking closer to SGA, even though this year’s other finals team was at the other end of the spectrum in terms of usage, in some ways.2 SGA It might be that we need a new paradigm of usage, as Seth Partnow wrote in an evergreen article on “heliocentrism” in the NBA i.e. teams relying on their stars.
Yes, Haliburton was third in the league in assists per game this season. He was also 46th in scoring, 45 places behind league leader and MVP SGA. Haliburton also clocked a usage rate of 25.4%, sixteenth in the league and behind the Stephon Castles, Keyonte Georges, and Anfernee Simons of the world.
The three clips above, despite showing up in Haliburton’s usage, also illustrate what we miss if we don’t watch Haliburton. Wittgenstein’s exhortation reminds us that we don’t realize what we will miss with Haliburton when we focus on TJ McConnell being the only Pacer who could score for ten minutes instead of what might have been had he not repeatedly been trapped against the sideline.
But I come to praise Haliburton, not to bury McConnell; lord knows he played his tail off and carried the Pacers at times throughout the finals. And folks with access to the right tracking data could likely see how often TJ was successfully iced and trapped, how often he drove up against the sideline instead of down the middle, as opposed to Haliburton.
I’ll miss watching Haliburton next season. We all will. And Indiana will be the worse for his absence.
Just go back and watch.
Amongst players who ran at least five such possessions every game.
The standard NBA definition of usage referring to how much of a team’s offense a player uses by shooting, assisting, and turning the ball over.