When Tyrese Haliburton was traded out of nowhere from the Sacramento Kings to the Indiana Pacers before the 2022 NBA trade deadline, it left the rest of the league shocked.
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Not Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers shocked. It will be hard to ever top that trade, and it will be hard to ever rule anything out because of it.
But still, as Adrian Wojnarowski said at the time, like the Doncic deal multiple teams would have been “knocking at the door” if they knew Haliburton was available.
It left the entire league “stunned” according to the former ESPN insider, who added that this was a player that “everybody thought would be the cornerstone of their future”.
“Including Tyrese Haliburton.”
And that is what hurt Haliburton the most. Not just that it happened. But that it happened without warning. The team that he had given all of himself to, that he thought he was going to deliver a championship to.
Instead, Haliburton was “distraught” on the plane ride he took following the trade with Buddy Hield and Tristan Thompson, who were also sent to Indiana as part of the deal.
“I was still in shock and pissed and all that stuff,” Haliburton said at the NBA’s inaugural in-season tournament ahead of the final against the Lakers.
“And so, while I was basically just sitting there scrolling on my phone with my head down I just had to listen to Tristan and Buddy tell me how bad the Kings messed up the whole time.
I was like ‘Can you guys just shut up? Like I just wanna get there.”
The trade came as a shock to Haliburton. (Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images)
The trade came as a shock to Haliburton. (Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
But the Kings did mess up, and it isn’t one of those trades where you can say that with the benefit of hindsight. Most people thought so at the time. Lakers coach J.J. Redick included.
Before he was holding the clipboard, Redick was sitting in front of a microphone on his podcast. Even when Redick was in the media, he wasn’t one for hot takes.
His analysis would be thoughtful and measured. He was the type to consider both sides of an argument. But when it came to the Haliburton trade, he only saw one side. So, he ripped in.
“There’s really no statistical measure that you can look at this season that doesn’t say Tyrese Haliburton has been the best player for the Kings,” Redick said at the time.
“All of the all-encompassing advanced stats, single metric stats, who’s the best player? It’s been Tyrese. And the second-best player on the team for the Kings this year has been Harrison (Barnes). That is a fact.
“I don’t give a f*** how many points a guy averages. That doesn’t mean s***. Tyrese Haliburton plays basketball exactly how basketball should be played.”
Redick apologised the following year for his take after the Kings surged up the Western Conference standings, eventually breaking an NBA-record 16-year playoff drought.
Tyrese "gone MAD" - Insane 3-point shot! | 00:34
But what Redick didn’t know at the time was that De’Aaron Fox would later be dealt too and that the Kings, who lost in the first round of the 2023 playoffs to the Warriors, would fail to qualify for the playoffs in the next two seasons.
In other words, he was right from the very start and the sad reality for the Kings is that as bad as the Haliburton trade now looks, with the two-time All-Star preparing to play in his first NBA Finals series this week, it doesn’t even rank Sacramento’s worst move all-time.
From the Nik Stauskas trade to selecting Marvin Bagley III over Luka Doncic, it was just the latest in a series of missteps by a Kings franchise that has largely struggled for relevancy.
Whether Haliburton would have changed things is up for debate. Maybe getting out of Sacramento was the best thing for his career. After all, it taught him an important lesson.
“It’s scary, right?” an honest Haliburton said in his first interview as a Pacer when asked if it would be hard to trust his new organisation after how it ended in Sacramento.
“I put a lot of love, a lot of trust in Sacramento and kind of immersed myself in the community, with the people. They just got rid of me. That’s part of the business.”
Haliburton went on to admit that it “hurt” when he got traded, but at that point there wasn’t anything he could do about it other than to embrace a fresh start in Indiana.
“They’ve shown me nothing but love since I’ve got here, they’re another organisation taking a chance on me when they have no reason to, so I’m gonna put everything I’ve got into this,” he said.
As it turned out, the Pacers were also prepared to put everything into him. And now, they are just four wins away from the ultimate reward.
HOW PACERS FOLLOWED ‘BLUEPRINT’ TO BUILD AROUND HALIBURTON
“Finding a franchise-calibre point guard at age 21 is extremely difficult to do,” Indiana coach Rick Carlisle said back in 2022.
But that is exactly what the Pacers thought they had in Haliburton. So, they went about building around him.
It is not a novel concept; building around your franchise superstar. Although the fact the Pacers thought that highly of Haliburton, at just 21 years old, to commit to reshaping their roster to fit around him spoke volumes.
But they also did it in a different way to most teams. They built what forward Myles Turner said could be a “new blueprint for the rest of the league”.
Tyrese Haliburton celebrates with the Bob Cousy Trophy after the 125-108 win against the New York Knicks. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
Tyrese Haliburton celebrates with the Bob Cousy Trophy after the 125-108 win against the New York Knicks. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
“I think the years of the superteams and stacking, it’s not as effective as it once was,” he said.
“Since I’ve been in the league, this NBA is very trendy. It just shifts. The new trend is what we’re doing. OKC does the same thing. Young guys get out and run, defend and use the power of friendship is how they call it.”
Although as much as the Pacers may be different to the superteams of old, they still do have two core stars in Haliburton and Pascal Siakam on max contracts.
Maybe Indiana’s success says more about the importance of nailing the ancillary pieces and the fit around those headline names than the superstars themselves, since every team in the league to a degree has its franchise-altering players.
Wherever the truth may lie, there was a similar conversation leaguewide after the Denver Nuggets won their first championship.
Of course, having three-time MVP Nikola Jokic as the centrepiece certainly helped.
But then Nuggets coach Michael Malone even told reporters at the time he thought other teams may well try “make this a blueprint”, referring to the way ownership allowed him and the front office to patiently build a title-contending roster from within.
Even still that level of success wasn’t guaranteed to be sustainable and while role players like Bruce Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope proved value-adds at the time, they eventually got their paydays and left.
Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr., meanwhile, have battled injuries and inconsistent form which has left Denver at a crossroads entering next season.
"Is that a real question right now?" | 00:26
There are certainly parallels to be made between the way the Pacers and Nuggets built their rosters. Both teams largely resisted the temptation to make all-in moves.
Of course, that is one of the benefits of being a small-market team. There isn’t the same level of external pressure to get results immediately.
Although just as there are advantages to being out of the spotlight, conversely it also means struggling to land big names in free agency and instead having to nail trades and moves around the margins to build a championship-calibre roster.
The Pacers did just that.
Sure, Indiana sent three first-round picks as part of its deal to land Siakam, but as a whole there was an organic nature to the way this roster came together.
And it all started with Haliburton. From there, the Pacers went about tactically singling out players who they believed would fit into a specific play style — the same one that caught out a Cleveland team that looked unstoppable in the regular season.
But when Haliburton arrived in Indiana, as he even admitted after Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Knicks, the Pacers “weren’t very good”.
They were in 13th when they traded for Haliburton and finished the season 11th with a 35-47 record. Nothing in their vision changed.
Haliburton was still the central figure and the identity for this team was clear, even if the rest of the pieces weren’t in place yet.
“If you have the right player to build around, it can happen much faster than you think,” Carlisle said after Game 6 of the Knicks series.
“Getting Tyrese made it very clear what our identity as a team needed to be. We needed to be a fast-paced team with shooting.”
The Pacers built their team around Tyrese Haliburton. Justin Casterline/Getty Images/AFP
The Pacers built their team around Tyrese Haliburton. Justin Casterline/Getty Images/AFPSource: AFP
That process started in the 2022 draft when the Pacers took Bennedict Mathurin with the sixth overall pick and then Andrew Nembhard in the second round before trading Malcolm Brogdon in a deal to acquire Aaron Nesmith a few days later.
All three have emerged as key parts of Indiana’s deep rotation, which has been a feature of its playoff run, with Nesmith in particular showing up a true impact player on both ends.
He isn’t doing it on much coin either, having been extended by the Pacers in 2023 on a contract worth $33 million over three years.
The Pacers continued to build out their depth in 2023 by trading for Obi Toppin and by last season, they had become a genuine dark horse in the Eastern Conference.
The problem? As lethal as they were on offence, finishing the season as the sixth-highest scoring team in NBA history, the defence was a major problem.
So, having patiently and meticulously crafted a balanced roster, the Pacers made a splash — and a sensible one at that — by trading for Siakam.
The Pacers still remain one of the most potent offensive teams in the league, in large part due to the insane pace they play at. But that pace is a direct result of the stops they get on the defensive end, and Indiana has turned up the pressure on that side of the ball this season.
Siakam is a large reason why, but even Nembhard had six steals in Game 6 as he caused all kinds of problems for Jalen Brunson with his on-ball pressure and when this Pacers team is able to generate turnovers, it is game over on the other end.
Whether that means Haliburton finding Siakam with an outlet pass for the finish at the rim or kicking it out to the corner to one of their plethora of shooters.
Tyrese Haliburton celebrates along with forward Pascal Siakam. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Tyrese Haliburton celebrates along with forward Pascal Siakam. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)Source: AP
“The buy-in from our whole group has been huge,” Haliburton said.
“Last year, all that was being said was that we couldn’t win because we don’t guard anybody and all we try to do is outscore people.
“I think we’ve taken such a big step on the defensive end as a group... the step we made on that side of the ball is why we’re here.”
Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said ahead of the Finals that he and his organisation, another one that has largely been built organically and through calculated moves, have “a lot of respect” for the Pacers.
“The program they’ve built, the way that they play, the identity they’ve built on the court, the way their guys play together. The whole is better than the sum of the parts with their team, which I think is the sign of a good team,” Daigneault said.
But as much as the Pacers are in the position they are now because of the way this entire roster fits as a whole, it still all revolves around Haliburton. The centre of their solar system.
He is Indiana’s “maestro”, as Siakam put it. To others around the league, however, he was “overrated”. For that, it’s best left to Haliburton to respond.
EMBRACING THE ‘ENTERTAINER’ AND SHEDDING THE ‘OVERRATED’ TAG
Now, you can argue that the whole ‘Haliburton is overrated’ narrative has been overblown considering its origin.
If you missed it, the Pacers guard was given that tag by his peers after receiving 14.4 per cent of the votes from 90 players in an anonymous poll conducted by The Athletic.
A total of 13 players voted for Haliburton, up from the 3.7 per cent of votes he garnered the year prior.
Those 13 players obviously don’t speak for the rest of the league and it is hard to argue Haliburton is overrated anymore considering what he has done in the playoffs this season.
But it is a tagline that has followed Haliburton around since the poll’s results were first released in late April, and honestly there are few other players in the league that would be better equipped to handle having their name associated with that word.
After all, Haliburton does plenty of talking on and off the court, so it’s not much for him to get a bit of smack thrown back in his direction.
It may well be part of the reason why Haliburton has that reputation across the league, or at least on social media and for those 13 players in particular.
Hall of Fame point guard Tim Hardaway Sr. echoed a similar sentiment on the ‘Gil’s Arena’ podcast.
Haliburton isn’t afraid to put himself out there. (Paul Bereswill/Newsday via AP, left, and AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)
Haliburton isn’t afraid to put himself out there. (Paul Bereswill/Newsday via AP, left, and AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)Source: AP
“If I go back and put on my s*** and suit up, I wanna go f*** up Haliburton,” he said.
“I wanna go f*** him up. He talks so much s***. I wanna go back and bust his motherf***ing a**. ... He thinks he all that.”
He does. Because he is.
He is the guy who eliminated the Bucks and mocked Damian Lillard’s ‘Dame Time’ celebration as Indiana booked its spot in the inaugural in-season tournament championship game.
He is the guy who channeled Reggie Miller in Game 1 of the Knicks series and eventually sent New York packing.
He is an “entertainer”, as former NBA player Chandler Parsons said on FanDuel TV’s ‘Run It Back’.
“... I think this is why the overrated stuff, players hating, jealousy happened. He busts your ass and tells you about it. I think it’s great, he has that fire in him.”
Haliburton doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. He embraces the villain tag, and it’s what makes him the player that he is according to Oklahoma City’s Jalen Williams.
“What makes him very good is that he’s very confident,” he said of Haliburton.
“To be able to play as well as he’s been playing through a lot of the ‘overrated’ stuff, you gotta tip your hat to him for that.”
Haliburton doesn’t lack confidence. Andy Lyons/Getty Images/AFP
Haliburton doesn’t lack confidence. Andy Lyons/Getty Images/AFPSource: AFP
Maybe the overrated talk has to do with his personality. Maybe it has to do with the fact Haliburton’s impact on winning doesn’t always show up on the box score.
Sometimes he may not get the final assist but it is his outlet passes in transition that put the Pacers in a position to score against a disjointed defence, or it is the off-ball screening that pulls the defence in towards him and creates an open look for a teammate.
Maybe it is because he doesn’t have the best reputation as a defender, or isn’t the pure scoring threat that some of the league’s other superstars are.
But he is the reason why the Pacers were one of the most high-efficient offences in the NBA over the last two seasons.
And in a close-out game when Indiana needed him the most, Haliburton delivered by becoming the fourth player in NBA history with 20-plus points, 10-plus assists and three-plus steals in a Finals-clinching win.
The other three? Steph Curry, Scottie Pippen and Magic Johnson.
And speaking of Johnson, Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas sees shades of Magic in the way Haliburton was evaluated early in his career.
“He was coming out in a draft from Iowa. People say his shot was messed up. Everything was wrong, but the thing that you missed the most was how gifted he is,” Thomas said on NBA TV.
“And the gifted players, and I’m gonna use Magic Johnson as an example. Magic, they were saying that everything he did was wrong — the no-look, the shot was bad, this was bad, he didn’t… but what you missed when you’re evaluating talent is the specialness of the gifts that we’re watching and seeing.
“What Haliburton has done since he’s gotten to the league, he’s been so unique that they didn’t know what they had in Sacramento and in the draft, they (the NBA) did not know what they were looking at.
“He gets an old-school coach in Rick Carlisle, and Rick Carlisle goes, ‘Wait a minute, this is different.’ So they design a whole offence around his skill — passing, running, jumping, moving, fast, everything else.”
So, overrate him all you want. Misunderstand him and miscast him all you want. Haliburton doesn’t care. The Pacers don’t care. They’ll just keep doing their thing, their own way.
But behind all that confidence and bravado is another side to Haliburton. A fierce loyalty. Someone who “just loves hard” — sometimes to a fault.
“It can be my biggest upside but it can be a big downfall too,” added Haliburton after the trade.
The Pacers guard was left “crying my eyes out” after the phone call from general manager Monte McNair confirming the news he was being sent to Indiana.
“Shut up, stop playing’... you’re lyin’, get the f*** outta here” were a few of the messages that came back from his teammates in the group chat when he texted them the news.
Haliburton couldn’t believe it. No one could. But, as Haliburton told reporters after the Pacers sealed their spot in the NBA Finals, out of the heartbreak came a silver lining.
Haliburton rebounded from the heartbreak. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
Haliburton rebounded from the heartbreak. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
“This is a franchise that took a chance on me, saw something that other people didn’t see in me,” he said.
“Sometimes I think they saw more in me than I saw in myself… I love being a Pacer.”
And in an article for The Players’ Tribune where Haliburton reflected on the “biggest surprise” of his entire life, he left his new fanbase — and in some ways himself — with a message of hope.
“I’m coming to Indiana to leave my imprint, and to help this team do something special,” he wrote.
“I’m coming here to create a legacy that makes Pacers fans proud.”
He has already done that and now, he is just four wins away from doing what he always thought he would do in Sacramento.
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