Tyrese Haliburton returned to the court on Oct. 7, playing 16 minutes in the Indiana Pacers’ 123-112 preseason win over the Minnesota Timberwolves, finishing with seven points and six assists. It was his first game since tearing his right Achilles during Game 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals. The game was played in Ames, Iowa, at Iowa State University, his alma mater, making it a two-part homecoming.
It was his first game at his college arena in six years. Students lined up the night before to get into the student section and grab a yellow shirt with Haliburton’s face on it, labeled “Cyclone Hali.” For more than 16 months, the two-time All-Star guard had been patient, then less patient, and then eager to leave the sideline and play again.
With 4:27 left in the first quarter, Haliburton got his first break. “I was tired as hell,” he said with a laugh after the game. “But even through that, I just kept feeling like, ‘Man, I’m playing again.'”
On Indiana’s first possession, an antsy Haliburton fired a no-look pass intended for Andrew Nembhard that sailed out of bounds. On the next trip, he ran a 2-on-1 with Pascal Siakam and finished with a crossover into a 15-foot jumper, his first basket in more than a year. The adrenaline carried him through the rest of the game.
“I have my own internal expectations,” Haliburton said. “But our goal is to win a championship. That has never wavered.”
A season of questions
The Pacers’ season, and Indiana’s road back to contention, depends on meeting those expectations. The last time Haliburton was healthy, he delivered one of the great clutch postseason runs in NBA history, hitting a game-tying or game-winning shot in each of the four rounds of the 2025 playoffs.
Indiana led in the first quarter of Game 7 in Oklahoma City before Haliburton tore his Achilles, and the Thunder went on to claim the title. While Haliburton spent the 2025-26 season recovering, the Pacers won just 19 games.
Despite reaching the conference finals in both 2024 and 2025, Indiana is projected to win a modest 42 games in 2026-27 and ranks 10th in the Eastern Conference, according to the Basketball Power Index. Haliburton shrugged off the projection. “I don’t look too much into it,” he said. “Our whole team can relate to that. We’ve all felt that way one way or another.”
The Pacers are the last team to beat the champion New York Knicks in a playoff series. Haliburton is determined to prove Indiana can reclaim its place at the top of a more competitive East.
“Finding that magic again, that’s no guarantee,” Pacers general manager Chad Buchanan said. “But our core guys believe in each other. They feel like people have written them off already. That’s what’s happened those two years we made runs — people just kind of discarded us. That’s what fuels them.”
Giving back in Indianapolis
Before training camp, Haliburton visited children at the Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis as a spokesperson for the Indiana Donor Network, which raises awareness of organ donation. The five kids in attendance are kidney transplant recipients, some as young as 6. Over a table of coloring sheets, a lively debate broke out about favorite colors. When Haliburton said his favorite was gray, the kids recoiled. “You never hear that, huh?” he said with a smile.
Haliburton spent much of the past year in Indianapolis taking on community projects. He helped the Pacers revitalize their charity softball game this summer, which featured players from the Indianapolis Colts and Indiana Fever and drew a packed crowd to Victory Field, a 12,000-seat Triple-A baseball stadium downtown.
His connection to the Midwest runs deep. He was born in Wisconsin, met his wife, Jade, in Ames, and proposed there. His bond to the region has only grown since the Pacers acquired him in 2022.
“It’s a different perspective on life now,” Haliburton said. “I’m just thankful to be playing basketball again and to be doing all the different things that I can do in the community because when something like that happens, it’s like your life flashes before your eyes.”
During his first vacation a few months after surgery, he could barely walk down the stairs of a rented house and needed help getting around when they left. His surgeon had warned him, but the reality hit hard. He wept in the shower.
“Just having to come to terms with going from being on top of the world to the complete opposite of that in an instance,” he said. He added that a basketball injury comes with a timeline. “You know you’re going to be good, but it’s a scary thing.”
In the middle of his rehab, Haliburton also dealt with a bad case of shingles. He gained 30 pounds and suffered severe facial swelling as a side effect of the heavy medication. The contagious illness kept him away from his teammates on the sideline, another blow in a long season.
Buchanan praised his approach. “In the league, especially when a star player like that is injured, what that means for the next year, sometimes they’re on their own little schedule,” Buchanan said. “That’s not how Ty’s wired. Ty is wired to know what does the team need from me, rather than what I need to do for the team.”
During his recovery, Haliburton occasionally rewatched his old highlights. “Just to feel something,” he said. “I once could do that. I miss that feeling.” He also rewatched the 2025 Finals, focusing on Game 4. The Pacers led the series 2-1 before the Thunder rallied from double-digit deficit in the second half, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scoring 15 of his 35 points in the final 4:38. “Game 4 will forever live in my brain,” Haliburton said. “You win that game, the whole series changes.”
Rebuilding habits and a new center
Haliburton doesn’t want the Pacers to forget last season. Indiana finished with its fewest wins in franchise history. Injuries decimated the roster early, and the team began positioning itself for a better draft pick by the second half. “You can take [our preseason rankings] as disrespect, but at the same time, you got to understand we put ourselves in that position by the way we played last year,” Haliburton said. “There’s standards that we didn’t meet that we got to get back to.”
Training camp has focused on rebuilding those habits. The night before the first practice, the team gathered at Buchanan’s house, on the floor of his indoor basketball court, for an annual tradition now in its fourth year. Coach Rick Carlisle lamented how long the summer had been, noting it had been 5½ months since the last game in April. “Reclaim” became the key word of the meeting.
Carlisle warned against treating Haliburton as a savior. “We’re a team that’s very reliant on one another,” he said before the game in Ames. “One of the things that when we had a really, really good two-year run, it made us a special team, our connectivity, our ecosystem, dependence on one another. We’re always going to be better as the sum of all the parts.”
Most of the core remains the same: Haliburton, Siakam, Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith. The major change came at the trade deadline, when Indiana acquired Ivica Zubac to replace the departed Myles Turner, a deal that cost the Pacers the No. 5 pick in the draft. Team sources say the Pacers are confident the move will help reopen their championship window. They also acknowledge that Zubac, who plays closer to the basket, offers different strengths than Turner, a center who stretches the floor from 3-point range.
“We have a great coach who figures things out,” Buchanan said. “That’s a strength of his. If things aren’t going well, and we aren’t playing well — or [Zubac’s] not fitting well, he adapts.”
The fit could take time, including the chemistry between Zubac and Haliburton. Early in the preseason, their pick-and-roll timing has been off, with Haliburton often rounding the corner before his new center can roll. Buchanan said Haliburton is eager to prove himself. “He hates that people say he’ll have to be patient,” Buchanan said. “He’s like, ‘I’ve been out 16 effing months. I’m ready to play.’ He’s obviously very confident, but I still think there’s going to be a ramp-up for him as just getting his feet, groove and rhythm back.”
Signs of the old Haliburton
Haliburton moved like his former self at times, but growing pains were evident in his first game back. He compared himself to a rookie, playing too fast and needing to slow down to let the offense find its rhythm. He tweaked his right ankle and sat out the next preseason game, but an MRI confirmed his Achilles was unaffected. “I was hyped to be out there, excited, but I just got to slow down a little bit,” he said. “There’s a ton of improvement to be made on my end and on our team’s end. But I’m just excited to be back on the floor.”
The gym this summer gave him reason for confidence. In late July, 13 months after surgery, he took one dribble and tossed the ball toward the basket. As he chased it, the ball bounced just short of the rim. Midair, he crossed the ball between his legs and dunked with his right hand while Pacers staff let out a collective scream. Haliburton had a running bet with Erik Huddleston, Indiana’s strength and conditioning coach: if he completed the dunk, he could skip his post-practice workout. It was a dunk he hadn’t regularly made since he was a 20-year-old rookie. He later posted a video of it to his social media accounts.
A quieter moment a month later sent an even louder signal. During a minicamp scrimmage in Los Angeles before the season, Haliburton fell to the floor. Months earlier, the whole gym would have gone silent, waiting for him to get up, as it had in Oklahoma City. This time, he got up, and the game continued.
“That,” he said, “makes me feel normal again.”