32 points. 15 assists. 12 rebounds. 0 turnovers.
No one in the history of the NBA has ever put up those numbers in a game. Tyrese Haliburton just did it in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals to put the Indiana Pacers up 3-1 against the New York Knicks.
“I feel like we’re making up stats at some point to make me look better,” Haliburton said when asked about his unique stat line after the game.
There’s something to that with some of these combinations that people come up with but this wasn’t like it was the only player in the conference finals to hit 5 3-pointers before midnight on a Tuesday with double digit assists and zero turnovers while getting four steals and wearing two different pairs of shoes. This was just simple statistics. 30 points, 15 assists, 10 rebounds. No turnovers. Nobody had done it. Haliburton’s cheat code is his ability to avoid turnovers. No point guard plays with or has ever played with this level of defensive manipulation and high-risk passing with a complete lack of turnovers. That’s what makes Haliburton a true 1 of 1.
“It’s pretty remarkable. This has become his thing,” Rick Carlisle said of Haliburton taking care of the ball with no turnovers. “There will be a new statistical category perhaps named after him somewhere down the line.”
An obvious suggestion for “a Haliburton:” a game with 15 assists and 0 turnovers. The Pacers superstar (10 in regular season) is behind John Stockton’s 14 and tied with Chris Paul in these games, for now. But Haliburton is 25. Paul just finished his 20th season. Stockton played for 19. Haliburton is the new point god with a chance to do a lot of special things in his career. None bigger than being five wins away from an NBA Championship.
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For whatever reason, he’s wildly under-appreciated by the media—who say he’s a “fake, wannabe all-star,” or doubt whether he’s putting in the necessary work, or still don’t believe he’s a superstar even after last night—and even a small collection of his peers that somehow voted him as the most overrated player in the NBA. A 15-game stretch to open this season hindered by a lack of summer workouts do to an injury at the Olympics cemented so many people’s opinions of one of the NBA’s best young talents despite him making it to back to back conference finals and consecutive All-NBA teams. But the sights are set higher for the Pacers and their point guard, the job in this series isn’t done yet and they had to get this one to retake command after blowing a 20-point lead in the previous game.
“I feel like I let the team down in Game 3,” Tyrese Haliburton said of what he liked about his performance in Game 4. I felt like I could have been so much better. I felt like I responded the right way today. Just try to be aggressive, take what the defense gives me.”
You could see from the opening tip that the Pacers were intent on getting the pace back into the game. They ran on every make and miss in the first quarter (mostly makes from the Knicks). One possession where Brunson finds inside with a layup resulted in a Siakam layup just four seconds later. Haliburton’s hit-ahead passes were crushing a Knicks team trying to keep up on the scoreboard at the preferred tempo of Indiana. By the end of the first, the Pacers had scored 43 points, one more than they scored in all of the second half, the Knicks had 35, and Haliburton was already on triple double watch hovering around 15/5/5 as he and Jalen Brunson went back and forth with Triple H watching on the sidelines thinking about the WWE getting those two in the ring together last summer.
With that level of pace, it just felt like the Pacers could wear down the Knicks in the long run and despite them shooting 39 free throws and staying close, you could see the signs of fatigue in the second half when Karl-Anthony Towns would walk down the floor on offense and badly miss a 3-pointer or commit a bad foul that you can only call a mental error. And while the Pacers could never fully separate and only kept them lead as low as 6 and briefly up to 15, this time they never stopped being themselves. They constantly found holes in the Knicks defense with Haliburton at the forefront of it all.
Pascal Siakam scored 30 points with the timeliest collection of buckets you’ll ever see in a basketball game. Myles Turner was quiet but finished some big shots inside, drew fouls fighting for rebounds, and did everything he could to make life difficult for KAT when he was on him, Bennedict Mathurin scored 20 points in just 12 minutes and rediscovered how to play like himself within the Pacers system making quick aggression decisions with the ball and timely cuts without it, and Aaron Nesmith with a sprained ankle just calmly added 16 points on great efficiency while doing amazing work against Jalen Brunson, who did almost all of his damage in the 7 minutes he wasn’t matched up against the Pacers most physical defender.
Jalen Brunson had 31, so Aaron Nesmith must not have played him that well right? Check out these crazy numbers: Brunson with Nesmith on: 30 mins, 3/13 FG, 10 points. Brunson with Nesmith off: 7 mins, 6-6 FG, 7-8 FT, 21 points. Brunson had 10 shooting plays and 21 points in 7 min
— Nate Duncan (@NateDuncanNBA) May 28, 2025
Like always this was a team win. It’s the Indiana Pacers way. And that philosophy has them one win away from their first Finals appearance since 2000. It was fitting for so many of the members of that 2000s team and many other eras to be in the fieldhouse for this game: Reggie Miller, Rik Smits, Derrick McKey, Dale Davis, Antonio Davis, Travis Best, Jermaine O’Neal, Danny Granger, George Hill, Brad Miller, Lance Stephenson, and Darren Collison. There were so many that I’m sure I forgot someone.
Haliburton said it was the first time Granger had been back in Indy since he retired, considers Hill one of his vets after getting to play with him briefly a couple seasons ago, and has often talked about his relationship with Reggie. And all of those Pacers alumni got to see a show put on by the newest star of the franchise with a chance to do something that none of them were ever able to do.
5 wins to go.
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