by Mahanth
We need to talk about Tyrese Haliburton. The NBA has no idea what’s coming if the Pacers stay healed up for the 2026-27 season. No idea. The national circus of disrespect still continues as usual.
I just laugh.
Pacer nation is exactly where we always want to be: in small-market skunkworks stealth mode. Not under the radar, but beyond the radar’s observable universe.
It’s fair to be impressed all we want by the Pugnacious Pacers Playoff Pushes of 2024 and 2025 that shocked the world. I was so moved as a diehard fan and cancer patient those two worst years of my life, I wrote a free mini-book about how they helped me survive, as the Carlisle/Haliburton Brain Trust led Indiana to a filthy, borderline Demonic 5-2 playoff series record dismantling the most elite teams on the planet in one devastating stretch or another. I dare you to convince me it wouldn’t be 8-0 and two Larry O’Brien trophies perched in downtown Indianapolis if Haliburton finished the series against Boston and OKC in good health. Healthy-Hali is a whopping 5-0 in playoff series to date- and Indy only lost without him to two straight championship teams, Celtics and Thunder.
Magical as the 2024 and particularly 2025 runs were [ they literally ran (ships of) fools out the gym like a littoral combat ship ] let me propose one single data point, a single number even more “magical-er.” Something Tyrese Haliburton himself may not necessarily agree with, because they lost the game in the middle of a losing season. It happened on February 11, 2022. Immediately after a shocked Haliburton “cried uncontrollably” en route to Indiana because Sacramento abruptly traded him away, he made his debut in a Pacers uniform. Something weird happened the likes of which the NBA may never witness again in our lifetimes, just like his four buzzer-beating playoff daggers in four separate series in 2025..
I watched the debut live on TV, barely even knowing who this young playa was, never having watched him before. And will never forget certain exciting sequences in that ballgame.
What’s the big deal worth writing home about, sports fans? It’s not Hali’s solid stat line in his Indiana debut [ 23 points, 6 assists, 3 steals, 4 threes ]. Not even that in his first game he had to play alongside new teammates, new coaches, new offensive and defensive schemes, in a new time zone. Paired with no incumbent starting center, and no All-Star on the roster, because Domantas Sabonis, son of a Arvydas, was dealt to Sacramento in return.
The front office was on to something way before I was, doubling down on someone who wasn’t an All-Star, not yet. Allow me to present Exhibit A, the entire reason for this essay’s existence without a single basketball player’s name even attached to it:
“There’s no I in team,” said every youth athletics coach, ever. Ignoring the loss, look at the Cleveland-Indiana score after the very first quarter of the first game of the new Pacers Haliburton era, ever. A hodgepodge of new and old players unfamiliar with each other on a 19-38 team racked up a whopping 47 points in that quarter- a blistering pace with a run rate of 188 for a full game.
What’s in a number? Scoring 47 first-quarter points is quite a feat against any team. Scoring that many in any quarter is in fact rare. That it was accomplished by this particular patchwork Pacer team lacking one single All-Star strikes me as a historic milestone.
The ball moved around with, dare I say it, demonic energy. I had never seen anything like it. I couldn’t believe the speed, efficiency and shooting percentages. A bunch of different people stuffed the basket from all over the shop and hit open 3-pointers again and again, regardless of position. 6 playas ended up in double figures. Haliburton was the engine overhaul that made the team’s offense run, giving us a little taste of what this muscle car could do in the home of the Indy 500. This quarter was the harbinger of a new, revolutionary pace and space mastery resulting in fun-to-watch shootout basketball that has continued since- in NBA franchise history the Pacers have scored 47 to 50 points in a quarter 8 times total- top 3 in the NBA ever- all during the Carlisle/Haliburton Brain Trust era of just a few years. And the era’s not over.
One can argue Cleveland players and coaches had no idea what to expect from this bunch without good scouting reports, and that’s how they got blitzed for 47. It was “random” basketball in many ways, which is when opposing teams are vulnerable to underperforming. That’s the point I’m trying to make.
I’d bet on what opponents should expect this season, in the eloquent words of Mr. T:
