The Unlikely Rise of Tyrese Haliburton

It was less than six months ago that Tyrese Haliburton led the Indiana Pacers to the NBA Finals and to the brink of championship glory. To this day, the basketball community wonders if we’d be sitting here with a different NBA champion if Haliburton hadn’t torn his Achilles in the first quarter of Game 7 against the Oklahoma City Thunder, with everything on the line.

Coming off one of the most magical individual playoff runs in NBA history after being voted by his peers as the most overrated player in the Association earlier in the season, Haliburton didn’t just reverse his reputation in the postseason; he ascended into the conversations that now included him among the best point guards in the league.

The world fell in love with his game-winners and the unbelievable run from the Pacers to reach an unlikely Finals berth. Still, fewer people stopped to take a second to realize just how far Tyrese had come as a prospect.

For someone who was a zero-star recruit coming out of high school, Haliburton leading his team to the NBA Finals is just about as low of odds as you can find when projecting out a prospect’s ceiling at the professional level. For Hali himself, he’s never forgotten where he came from and how amazing his run to the NBA has been.

Haliburton’s Rise

Seven years is a distant memory, but it also feels near. It feels like yesterday that Haliburton was passed up on by 11 other teams before the Sacramento Kings called his name on draft night. It must also feel like yesterday that making the NBA was only an unattainable dream for a young kid from Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Making it to the NBA is almost impossible without considering other factors, but taking into account that Haliburton wasn’t even on the national radar for the majority of his teenage years makes his story even more spectacular.

As he details, he was a zero-star recruit coming out of high school, before ESPN gave him three stars as a knee-jerk reaction to his surprising college play.

“The three star thing, oh that drives me crazy because they threw that in when I got to college. I mean, because when I got to college, I was no star. I was supposed to redshirt, then I ended up starting game two and the next thing I knew, in the middle of the game and like it’s a three-star point guard, I’m like ‘what are you talking about?’. ESPN my name spelled wrong for the first like two weeks of the season. I used to go on ESPN, and it would say Tyrese Haliburton with two Ls. I’m like ‘Who is he?’”

he revealed.

Even after finally getting some stars on the board, in the grand scheme of things, Tyrese knew ultimately that didn’t mean anything. Countless four and five-star recruits in college never make it to the NBA, so to him, earning any stars was the recognition he had never received as a basketball player growing up.

In reality, making the league was never a possibility in his eyes until he outduelled some of the country’s best players with nearly every scout in attendance watching. He initially received offers only from small schools. Still, after competing against players considered the best prospects in the nation, the attention and offers started to roll in.

“I had mid-major offers, then in my last AAU tournament my senior year, we played against team Rio, who at the time had Scotty Lewis, I think he’s on the Hornets now and a kid named Brian Antoine but they’re both like five stars. ‘Ball Is Life’ was following them around and they were playing us and I went off and every coach in the country was there. I remember the game got done and like I was like in my head, I was like ‘Yo’ next thing I know I had offers. Michigan wanted me to come on a visit, Iowa State offering me all this stuff,”

he added.

Living the Dream

When his name was called on draft night, you could see the joy in Haliburton’s eyes. Some players describe the feeling as a sense of relief after being under the national spotlight for years, only to finally have their dreams come true. Still, in Tyrese’s case, having never fully received country-wide acclaim growing up, it was a sense of validation for all the hard work he had put in.

Even on draft night, there are no guarantees. Draft boards are draft boards, but no one can predict where the night will take them. We’ve seen supposedly sure-fire lottery picks sitting there deep into the second round, and even in Haliburton’s case, he slipped further down the draft board than most people anticipated.

One of the reasons was that he was seen as an immediate contributor with a high basketball IQ that could grow into a team’s “glue guy”. NBA front offices thought they could find that further in the first round or even the start of the second round.

In such a shallow draft, the need to get it right was at an all-time premium. In truth, no one in the basketball world could have predicted the ascension he’s gone on to have. It’s safe to say he’s comprehensively blown the projections out of the water, and becoming a franchise point guard was far beyond initial expectations.

Even at the professional level, it took time. The Kings initially banked on his ability, but when push came to shove and they had to make a decision on whether to roll with Hali or continue on their path with De’Aaron Fox, they chose the latter.

In the blink of an eye, Haliburton found himself in the exact same spot, needing to prove himself when his own franchise doubted his ceiling. The Indiana Pacers were the beneficiaries and are still reaping that reward today, despite still having much potential to grow into.

When you sit back and review Haliburton’s journey, it remains one of the more feel-good rises in modern league history. There is something remarkable about a lesser-hyped prospect catapulting their way into superstardom and becoming one of the best players in the world.

It’s even more impressive when considering the NBA wasn’t even initially on their radar. Haliburton he finished off by acknowledging that he’s living a dream he never thought was possible.

“The way I looked at it, I never would have thought that the NBA was going to be a thing, like not a real thing. Of course that’s what I always wanted to do, but yeah the like to even think about it wasn’t a thing for me.”