Tyrese Haliburton further shoves it in the faces of players by stealing crucial Game 2

Tyrese Haliburton is apparently in the defiance business.

During a Game 2 night in which the Indiana Pacers trailed by as many as 20 points to a Cleveland Cavaliers squad missing three of its top rotation players, and in which Donovan Mitchell dropped 48 points while making only one three-pointer, Haliburton stole the show—all without even scoring 20 points of his own, and after injuring his wrist.

The ending to Game 2 was bonkers, and filled with more inexplicable moments than any of us have the time to fully recount. All you need to know: The Pacers were down seven with barely a minute to go. After managing to cut the deficit to three, Haliburton was fouled inside 13 seconds to play. He made the first free throw, and then missed the second. But he grabbed his own rebound, because of course he grabbed his own rebound. He then dribbled the ball back out to reset, and nailed a step-back three-pointer of Ty Jerome. BALLGAME.

So yeah, it's like I said, Haliburton is in the defiance business. And in Game 2, he defied a little of everything: odds, logic, and narratives.

The odds were stacked against the Pacers

Yes, the Cavs' injury report suggests the Pacers should have won this game. Not only was Cleveland without Darius Garland for a fourth straight tilt, but it added Evan Mobley and De'Andre Hunter to the absentee list as well.

For most of the game, it didn't seem to matter. The Cavaliers ratcheted up their point-of-attack defense, especially against Haliburton, and also ramped up their offensive rebounding. Erasing 20-point deficits is hard, and even as Indy clawed back, it still felt like Cleveland would pull this out.

So much for that, obviously. In the moment, though, it was anything but obvious—or even likely. With 47 seconds to play, and the Pacers trailing by five, the Cavs had a 99.3 percent win probability, according to Inpredictable. That is absurd to read. And it is even more absurd in visual form:

Haliburton defied logic at the end of Game 2

Nothing about the ending here made sense. Never mind the math. It was nonsensical.

Haliburton put himself in position to win this game in the most bizarre, counterintuitive way possible. First of all, he missed a free throw, even though he was drilling 83.3 percent of his foul shots for the playoffs entering Tuesday night. Then, he came up with an offensive rebound, even though he had a grand total of two offensive boards through Indy's first six postseason games.

Then, after grabbing his own miss, he brought the ball back out to reset the offense, at a time when most other teams would have called a timeout. The Pacers had one left in their clip, and while head coach Rick Carlisle is known to let his players figure it out, this wasn't a fast-break opportunity off a live-ball rebound at the other end of the floor. Indy was in the half-court. The game was on the line. At least 24 other teams would have burned their timeout in this situation—and that's probably on the conservative end.

Finally, and most ridiculously, Haliburton did not look to drive the ball to tie the game, or to seek contact and earn another trip to the charity stripe, even though he's converting over 65 percent of his shots off downhill attacks for this playoffs, and even though he's having success through the first two games dusting individual Cavs defenders in space. No, he went for the three—the game-winner, the back-breaker, maybe even the series-crusher, with an injured wrist. It went in.

Who needs logic when you have Haliburton?

So much for Hali being overrated, right?

Remember when The Athletic's anonymous NBA player poll was released, and Hali was voted the most overrated star by his peers?

Good times.

It took Haliburton all of one playoff game to reinforce the inanity of that result. He continues to make a mockery of it now. Granted, it was always a farce. When you do the math, roughly one dozen players called him overrated. That isn't a groundbreaking number. It also doesn't make those dozen-or-so people any less egregiously wrong.

Sure, he has turned in glitzier performances, and higher-scoring detonations. So what? He is the primary reason Cleveland leveled up the aggression on its point-of-attack defense, forcing Haliburton and the Pacers to place so much of this game's fate in others' hands. It worked, until it didn't.

It doesn't matter that the Cavs were ultra-shorthanded. You can only play the team that's in front of you. To assert any differently is actually a disservice to the effort put forth by Cleveland. Mitchell played his butt off. So did Max Strus. And Sam Merrill. Craig Porter Jr. churned out some big plays. Jarrett Allen pushed his limits to the max.

This wasn't the best version of the Cavs, but it was a more-than-competent version of them. Indiana shortened its rotation in the second half because of them. Pascal Siakam by and large felt like a no-show because of them. Ben Sheppard was played off the floor because of them. On offense, this needed to become a Myles Turner game, and for a brief spell, a Bennedict Mathurin game, because of them.

This was decidedly not a Tyrese Haliburton game because of those same Cavs—until it all of a sudden was, until the very end, until the Pacers needed it to be a Haliburton game, and until he delivered, defying logic and odds and flimsy narratives, because that's what superstars do.

Dan Favale is a Senior NBA Contributor for FanSided and National NBA Writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Bluesky (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.