Despite ultimately unsuccessful finals, the past season was one of the best in Tyrese Haliburton’s career. However, it started very differently for the Pacers guard, as he now reveals. After the Olympics, he initially fell into a slump and even considered temporarily retiring from basketball.
The trigger was the Olympics, where Haliburton saw little playing time. That had a lasting effect on his self-confidence, the 25-year-old explained in the second season of the Netflix series Starting Five. “To be honest, I’ve never thought so negatively about myself as I did in November and December. It was definitely a dark time.”
The spiral of thoughts ultimately led Haliburton to doubt his value to the Indiana Pacers. In order not to harm the team, he considered stepping back, at least temporarily. “There was a point where I thought, ‘Would it be better for the group if I stepped back for a while? ’ I knew that if I wasn’t focused, neither would the team.”
His opinion only changed after a conversation with skills coach Drew Hanlen, who convinced him otherwise. With his help, Haliburton managed to turn things around mentally. He then shone athletically, especially in the playoffs, where his mental stability came into play several times in decisive moments of the game.
Haliburton describes the moment of injury in Game 7
Ultimately, however, the Pacers’ surprising playoff run came to a tragic end when Haliburton tore his Achilles tendon in the decisive seventh game of the finals. “I knew immediately what it was,” he explained. Opponent Shai Gilgeous-Alexander described his impressions as follows: “I turned around to see who was on the floor. I thought to myself, ‘Shit, no way,’ when I saw him screaming there.”
Haliburton went on to explain that, like Kobe Bryant once did, he initially tried to run off the court despite the injury. “I thought to myself, I can get out there, it’s possible. But it felt like an incredible weight on my foot. At that moment, I was completely overwhelmed by my emotions, simply because I understood the significance of what had happened.”
A later shot in the series shows Haliburton in tears in the locker room as he watched the rest of the game on TV. With an ice pack on his foot, he said to himself, “At least make it worth it.” Later, he would only regret not giving a speech to his teammates during his team’s halftime lead.