Pacers Report Cards: Grading every Pacers player's Conference Finals performance
By Mueez Azfar
Tyrese Haliburton
Stats: 2 Games, 34.2 MPG, 17.5 PPG, 3.5 RPG, 9 APG, 2 SPG, 0.5 BPG, 1.5 TOV, 2 FPG 46.2/40/100 Splits on 64.1% TS
Unfortunately, this one won't be that long. After leading the Pacers to their biggest win in the last decade, Tyrese Haliburton's journey was not over. After only one day of rest, Haliburton would have to continue his aggressive play against the best team in the league, the Boston Celtics and try to lead his team in an uphill battle against the powerhouse squad.
Haliburton's Game 1 performance was quite admirable for a 24-year-old in only their 14th playoff game. Recognizing what he would have to do to put the team in a position to succeed, Haliburton emptied the clip, taking 18 shots and scoring 25 points to go with 10 assists.
While he shot a lackluster 44% from the field, he still shot 6/14 from deep and hit plenty of incredible circus shots along the way. The truth is, if Indiana called a timeout late in the game, Tyrese Haliburton would have been the hero of Game 1.
We all know what happened in the closing stages of the fourth quarter, and the game was sent to overtime. In overtime, Haliburton tried his best to lift the team to victory, scoring six points to make up for his 0 points in the fourth quarter.
Unfortunately, the only play Haliburton will be remembered for is his turnover in the late stages of overtime where he essentially bounced the ball off his own foot out of bounds while being guarded by Jrue Holiday. This was perhaps the most confusing turnover of Haliburton's career and eventually cost Indiana a very winnable Game 1.
Game 2 was a different story. Haliburton was not nearly as aggressive as he was two days prior and only took eight shots in 28 minutes. His five shots in the first half weren't cutting it, but Indiana was still positive with him on the floor. Unfortunately, eight minutes into the third quarter, Haliburton left the game to go to the locker room after tweaking his hamstring again. Those eight minutes were the last minutes he would play in the 2024 playoffs.
Haliburton's round is difficult to grade. He played amazingly in Game 1 for 90% of the game, but just didn't have the last lift to dig his team out of the grave they dug themselves in. In Game 2, he went back to the passive Tyrese Haliburton but his team wasn't hurting too much from it.
Before you knew it, he was gone, out of the game, and out of the playoffs entirely. Overall, while he did fall apart at the end of Game 1, he was still fantastic and would have led his team to the win if a timeout was called. As for Game 2, we'll never know because of his injury and the same goes for the rest of the series.
Maybe Indiana would have pulled out a win after Game 2 if Haliburton didn't get injured, maybe not. At the end of the day, we can only grade the 68 or so minutes in front of us.