Tyrese Haliburton’s comeback fuels optimism and high hopes in Indiana
Tyrese Haliburton returned to the court on Oct. 7, playing 16 minutes in the Indiana Pacers’ 123-112 preseason win over the Minnesota Timberwolves. The two-time All-Star guard finished with seven points and six assists in his first NBA game in 16 months, his first since tearing his right Achilles in Game 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals.
The game was also a homecoming. The Pacers played at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, Haliburton’s alma mater. It was his first game at the college arena in six years. Students lined up the night before to get into the student section and grab yellow shirts with his face on them under the words “Cyclone Hali.”
Haliburton had waited patiently, and then not so patiently, to get back on the floor. His first moment came with 4:27 left in the first quarter. On Indiana’s first possession, he fired a no-look pass intended for Andrew Nembhard that sailed out of bounds. On the next trip, he ran a 2-on-1 with Pascal Siakam and finished with a crossover into a 15-foot jumper, his first basket in more than a year.
“I was tired as hell,” Haliburton said with a laugh after the game. “But even through that, I just kept feeling like, ‘Man, I’m playing again.'”
“I have my own internal expectations,” Haliburton said. “But our goal is to win a championship. That has never wavered.”
A season of uncertainty
The Pacers’ season, and their road back to contention, depends on how quickly Haliburton can return to form. The last time he was healthy, he delivered one of the greatest clutch postseason runs in NBA history, hitting a game-tying or game-winning shot in each of the four rounds of the 2025 playoffs.
Indiana led in the first quarter of Game 7 in Oklahoma City before Haliburton tore his Achilles. The Thunder went on to win the series. While Haliburton recovered through the 2025-26 season, the Pacers won just 19 games.
Indiana now looks like one of the most perplexing teams entering the 2026-27 season. The Pacers made the conference finals in both 2024 and 2025, but they are projected to win a modest 42 games and rank 10th in the Eastern Conference, according to the Basketball Power Index. They are also the last team to beat the champion New York Knicks in a playoff series.
“I don’t look too much into it,” Haliburton said. “Our whole team can relate to that. We’ve all felt that way one way or another.”
Pacers general manager Chad Buchanan said the team’s goal is not guaranteed. “Finding that magic again, that’s no guarantee,” he said. “But our core guys believe in each other. They feel like people have written them off already. That’s what’s happened those two years we made runs — people just kind of discarded us. That’s what fuels them.”
Giving back in Indianapolis
Before training camp, Haliburton and his wife, Jade, visited children at Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis. He was there as a spokesperson for the Indiana Donor Network to raise awareness about organ donation. The five children in attendance had all received kidney transplants.
When Haliburton picked up a coloring sheet with an orange-and-blue zero on a Pacers jersey, he scoffed. “Who drew this one?” he asked. “Orange and blue on a Pacers jersey?” Jade answered with a knowing smile: “Knicks colors.”
At the table, the kids, some as young as 6, debated their favorite colors. “Red!” one said. “Blue!” said another. “Rainbow!” a third added, sparking a debate over whether all the colors could count as one. When Haliburton said his favorite color was gray, the kids recoiled. “You never hear that, huh?” he said with a smile.
Haliburton spent much of the past year in Indianapolis taking on projects like this one. He helped the Pacers revive their charity softball game earlier in the summer, featuring players from the Indianapolis Colts and Indiana Fever. Fans packed Victory Field, a 12,000-seat Triple-A baseball stadium downtown.
His connection to the Midwest runs deep. He was born in Wisconsin, met his wife in Ames and proposed there. His bond with the region has grown since the Pacers traded for him in 2022.
“It’s a different perspective on life now,” Haliburton said. “I’m just thankful to be playing basketball again and to be doing all the different things that I can do in the community because when something like that happens, it’s like your life flashes before your eyes.”
The hard road back
On his first vacation a few months after surgery, Haliburton could barely walk down the stairs of a rented house and needed help getting around when they left. His surgeon had warned him, but the reality hit hard. He wept in the shower.
“Just having to come to terms with going from being on top of the world to the complete opposite of that in an instance,” he said.
He also described the uncertainty of the injury. “It’s such a crazy thing to say because it’s a basketball injury that no matter what … there’s a time put on it. You know you’re going to be good in that amount of time. We have the best doctors in the world, the best therapists, all those things. You know you’re going to be good, but it’s a scary thing.”
Midway through his rehab, Haliburton also developed a bad case of shingles. He gained 30 pounds and suffered severe facial swelling from the heavy medication. The contagious illness kept him away from his teammates on the bench during a long season that was already slipping away.
Buchanan said Haliburton’s approach set him apart. “In the league, especially when a star player like that is injured, what that means for the next year, sometimes they’re on their own little schedule, ‘Hey, I just got to do what’s right for me,'” Buchanan said. “That’s not how Ty’s wired. Ty is wired to know what does the team need from me, rather than what I need to do for the team.”
During his recovery, Haliburton would sometimes watch highlights of his old games. “Just to feel something,” he said. “I once could do that. I miss that feeling.”
He even rewatched the 2025 Finals. His focus stayed on Game 4, when the Pacers led the series 2-1 and the Thunder rallied from double-digit deficits in the second half. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 15 of his 35 points in the final 4:38. “Game 4 will forever live in my brain,” Haliburton said. “You win that game, the whole series changes.”
“Everybody always feels the summer is really long,” he said. “Well, I’ve had that for double, triple the amount of time everybody else.”
Rebuilding habits and a new center
Haliburton does not want the Pacers to forget last season. Indiana finished with its fewest wins in franchise history. Injuries decimated the roster early, and the team began positioning itself for a better draft pick by the second half. By season’s end, it looked like a shell of the team that reached the Finals.
“You can take [our preseason rankings] as disrespect, but at the same time, you got to understand we put ourselves in that position by the way we played last year,” Haliburton said. “There’s standards that we didn’t meet that we got to get back to. And there’s no secret that there was a drop-off last year.”
Training camp has focused on rebuilding those habits. The night before the first practice, the team gathered at Buchanan’s home on the indoor basketball court there. The gathering has become an annual tradition for the past four years, a chance for the Pacers to set priorities for the season. Coach Rick Carlisle lamented how long the summer had been: 5½ months since the team’s last game in April, and even longer since a game that mattered.
“Reclaim” became the key word of the meeting. Carlisle said having Haliburton back was important but warned against viewing him as a savior. “We’re a team that’s very reliant on one another,” Carlisle said before the Ames game. “One of the things that when we had a really, really good two-year run, it made us a special team, our connectivity, our ecosystem, dependence on one another. We’re always going to be better as the sum of all the parts.”
Most of the core remains the same: Haliburton, Siakam, Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith. The main change is Ivica Zubac, brought in to replace the departed Myles Turner in a trade-deadline deal that cost Indiana the No. 5 pick in the draft. Team sources say the Pacers are confident the trade will help reopen their championship window. They also acknowledge that Zubac, who plays closer to the basket, offers different strengths than Turner, a center who stretches the floor from 3-point range.
“We have a great coach who figures things out,” Buchanan said. “That’s a strength of his. If things aren’t going well, and we aren’t playing well — or [Zubac’s] not fitting well, he adapts.”
The fit may take time, including the chemistry between Zubac and Haliburton. Early in the preseason, their pick-and-roll timing was off, with Haliburton often rounding the corner before his new center had a chance to roll. Buchanan said Haliburton’s eagerness is part of the challenge. “He’s so anxious to prove to people. He hates that people say he’ll have to be patient. He hates that,” Buchanan said. “He’s like, ‘I’ve been out 16 effing months. I’m ready to play.’ He’s obviously very confident, but I still think there’s going to be a ramp-up for him as just getting his feet, groove and rhythm back.”
Signs of the old Haliburton
Haliburton moved like his former self at times in his return, but the growing pains were clear. He compared himself to a rookie, playing too fast and needing to slow down so the offense could find its rhythm. He tweaked his right ankle during the game and sat out the next preseason game. An MRI confirmed that his Achilles was unaffected.
“I was hyped to be out there, excited, but I just got to slow down a little bit,” he said. “There’s a ton of improvement to be made on my end and on our team’s end. But I’m just excited to be back on the floor.”
Several moments this summer gave him reason for confidence. One afternoon in late July, 13 months after surgery, he took one dribble and tossed the ball toward the basket. As he chased it, the ball bounced just short inside the Pacers’ practice facility. Midair, he crossed the ball between his legs and dunked with his right hand while staff members screamed. Haliburton screamed loudest, releasing more than a year of pent-up frustration.
He had a running bet with Erik Huddleston, Indiana’s strength and conditioning coach: if he completed the dunk, he could skip his post-practice workout. It was a dunk he had not regularly made since he was a 20-year-old rookie. Later, he posted a video of it on his social media accounts, and the message to the league was clear.
A quieter moment a month later sent an even louder signal. During a minicamp in Los Angeles before the season, Haliburton fell to the floor during a scrimmage. Months earlier, everyone in the gym would have gone silent, waiting for him to get up, as they had that night in Oklahoma City.
This time, nothing happened. He got up, and the game continued.
“That,” he said, “makes me feel normal again.”
