Tyrese Haliburton was already viewed as having one of the greatest playoff runs in Indiana Pacers history. Now, three games into the 2025 NBA Finals, it's exciting to say that he's only managed to raise his elite level of play to even greater heights, and is doing so in one of the most improbable ways.
Behind the All-Star's all-around impressive production, Indiana sports a 2-1 series lead over the once heavily favored OKC Thunder.
Perhaps the main reason for this unexpected lead -- outside of the sensational play of their second unit, of course -- is that Haliburton finds himself going toe-to-toe with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and has successfully found a way to be the antithesis of the league MVP.
Tyrese Haliburton leading Pacers over Thunder without any free throws
Over the last few seasons, Gilgeous-Alexander has built up a reputation of being the league's newest "free throw merchant," a player whose scoring game is heavily reliant on drawing favorable whistles and generating points at the foul line.
The league's leading scorer saw roughly 24.0 percent of his total points come from the charity stripe, as he registered a whopping 601 free throw makes (the most on the season).
In this year's championship matchup against Indiana, he's clearly continued his hunt for calls on offense, leading all players in fouls drawn (21), free throw attempts (26), and free throw makes (23).
However, while this approach clearly boded well for the Thunder throughout the regular season and in the first three rounds of this year's postseason, in these NBA Finals, it has been the lesser-fouled Pacers who find themselves currently reigning supreme and, from a more individualistic perspective, Tyrese Haliburton and his zero foul line visits are ironically outplaying SGA and his baiting tactics.
Despite not seeing any trips to the charity stripe this round, the 25-year-old is still dropping stellar scoring averages of 17.7 points a night while shooting 51.2 percent from the floor and 39.1 percent from deep, both of which are superior to the Thunder star's shooting splits.
On top of this, he boasts a higher assist average (7.7 compared to 5.0), net rating (3.1 to 1.1), and plus-minus (+2.7 to +1.7) between the two.
Of course, the most important edge is his team's need of just two more wins in order to be crowned NBA Champions.
The fact that Tyrese Haliburton has managed to lead the charge for the Pacers through this point while essentially playing the exact opposite way as the one-time favorite to win Finals MVP in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander makes their current standing all the more delightful to see.