How Pacers' Tyrese Haliburton shut out the noise and found a way to beat the Thunder

Indianapolis Star

2 days ago

INDIANAPOLIS -- Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton knows what to expect from the online and television discourse every time he has a performance like he had in Game 2 of the NBA Finals -- when his scoring and field goal attempt numbers take a dip and he doesn't make the impact he wants to.
During the regular season it's more of a local phenomenon, but once the postseason hit, the discourse became more national with every round. How is it possible someone capable of so much magic in a historically improbable late-game comeback such as Game 1 of this series when Haliburton hit a game-winning jumper with 0.3 seconds to go to be so quiet in games the Pacers lose. They say he's not aggressive enough or too inconsistent to be considered a superstar and wonder why the 2023-24 NBA assist leader hasn't figured out that he should just shoot more.
The narratives are overly simplistic, but Haliburton knows at this point there's only so much he can do to change that. He admits that he is "chronically online" and has a better sense of the NBA and how it's covered than just about any other active player, but at this stage he's actively trying to avoid the social media that he usually drinks in.
"I think the commentary is always going to be what it is, you know?" Haliburton said. "Most of the time, the talking heads on the major platforms, I couldn't care less. Honestly, like what do they really know about basketball?"
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Haliburton is aware there's a correlation between his scoring and the Pacers' success. He averaged 21.2 points in wins in the regular season on 14.6 field goal attempts per game and 14.3 points per game on 12.4 field goal attempts in defeats. But he views his scoring less as a cause of the Pacers' wins and more of a connected effect. He scores more and the Pacers win more when he's getting two feet in the paint, and that happens when he's orchestrating the Pacers whirling, ball-movement oriented offense the way that he wants to. The wispy 6-5, 185-pounder who was raised on Magic Johnson highlight videos is neither physically nor mentally built to doggedly drive into the lane to pile up shots and draw fouls in an effort to score 30 or 40 points every night. But when he gets the offense spinning, he can put up big scoring and assist numbers by letting the game come to him. Usually when he doesn't score much, that's a sign of a deeper dysfunction in execution, and Haliburton looks to find that issue rather than focus on his field goal attempts.
And in Game 3 he made the adjustments he needed to make. After scoring 17 points in Sunday's Game 2 with 12 of them coming in the fourth quarter after the Pacers had faded too far to come back, Haliburton dazzled in Game 3 with 22 points, 11 assists and nine rebounds to help lead the Pacers to a 116-107 win over the Thunder on Wednesday in their first NBA Finals home game since 2000. Twenty-five years to the day after the Pacers' Game 3 win over the Lakers in the 2000 Finals, they took a 2-1 lead in this NBA Finals with Game 4 coming up Friday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
Haliburton didn't view the performance as a triumph of aggression or will but of an adjustment in mindset and strategy against a Thunder defense that he told ESPN he considers to be the best he's played against.
In Game 2, Haliburton believed he allowed the Pacers' system of randomized movement to become too predictable and too predicated on high ball screens -- usually Haliburton's bread and butter, but an action that plays right into the hands of a swarming Thunder defense. In Game 3, he mixed up actions well enough to create space which was beneficial not only for him but everyone else on the Pacers' roster. Their 116 points were the most they've scored in a game this series, they shot a series-best 51.8% from the floor and scored 50 points in the paint after scoring just 34 in each of the first two games.
"We did a great job of just playing off the pitch, off handoffs, screening, all those things," Haliburton said. "I thought we did a great job of -- this is a defense that you can't consistently give them the same look. If you try to hold the ball and call for screens, they crawl into you and pack the paint. It's not easy. It's really tough. That's why they are such a historical defense. You just have to continue to give them different looks as much as you can. I thought we did a great job of just playing and continuing to play random basketball. Against a team like this, there's not really play calls. You've just got to play."
That's what Haliburton did and he let his own offense come to him as the game went along. He didn't take a shot for nearly six minutes to start the game and he missed his first field goal attempt, a 20-foot step-back pull-up jumper with 6:10 to go in the first quarter.
But he followed that by driving past Thunder All-NBA second team defender Jalen Williams to the right side of the foul line and hitting a 16-foot floater over Thunder center Isaiah Hartenstein with 5:10 to play in the first quarter. Then he hit his first 3-pointer in first-team All-Defensive Team pick Luguentz Dort's face with 3:00 to go in the period and suddenly he had his rhythm established early.
Haliburton put faith in his floater -- a weapon he's admittedly sometimes too reluctant to use -- hitting three mid-range shots in that fashion over top of charging big men. He scored two buckets at the rim -- one an impressive finish on a drive through contact and the other an easy two-handed fast-break dunk off a steal. He was 4 of 8 from 3-point range, hitting his most 3s since he made five in his 32-point, 15-assist, 12-rebound triple-double in the Pacers' win over the Knicks in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
But he didn't just look for his own offense. He helped get fellow All-Star Pascal Siakam started early as Siakam scored the Pacers first six points en route to a 21-point night. Haliburton still got center Myles Turner involved with pick-and-roll and pick and pop actions even though the Pacers tried not to live off those as much. He made plays "off the pitch," using give-and-go actions with bigs operating near the top of the key with their back to the basket catching his passes and tossing them right back to him and that got Haliburton downhill momentum that he could use to either go to the rim or pass and it helped keep the Thunder from loading up their defense quickly. The Pacers managed 41 field goal attempts in the paint after taking just 27 in Game 2.
"Terrific," Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said of Haliburton. "Look, every game you're going to have to make adjustments against this defense. There's just going to be different looks. You're going to have different high-level defenders on you. You're going to see some different coverage stuff. It's going to be constantly changing. So I thought his approach tonight was exactly what it needed to be, a combination of spatial awareness and aggression, and you know, a real good feel for aggression to score along with getting his teammates involved at the right times."
Haliburton moves forward knowing that solving the Thunder defense for a game isn't the same as solving it for a series. Oklahoma City led the NBA in defensive rating and allowed the fewest paint points, and they'll find more ways to keep the ball away from the rim in Game 4. He also knows that there will be games when he's successfully bottled up or scores fewer points because he's more focused on creating for others.
"I think there's going to be ebbs and flows," Haliburton said. "I'm never going to be, you know, super great and shoot so many shots every game consistently. There's going to be games where I don't and I've got to be able to find the right balance between the two. But I mean, I think experience is the best way I can learn from it. So seeing where I can be better is important through the first two games and just trying to be better today. You know, taking what the defense gives me, trying to play the right way and watch film and see where I can get better and be ready to go for Game 4."
Haliburton has a lot of voices telling him he needs to shoot more. His personal trainer, Drew Hanlen, is particularly explicit about it, and Haliburton acknowledges that he sees plenty of examples of himself passing out on shots he should take and make in the course of a game. But part of that is a product of focus on making the textbook right play and keeping in mind the importance of involving his teammates. In turn, they trust his judgment.
"Ty's got to do him," Siakam said. "That's what he's got to do, he's got to be himself every time he's out on the floor. He can impact the game in so many ways. So I'm really not worried about his scoring. I just know that he's going to make the right play. But when he's intentional about doing that every single play, I know something good is going to happen. So as long as he keeps doing that, we're going to be all right."