Tyrese Haliburton returned to NBA action on Oct. 7, playing 16 minutes in the Indiana Pacers’ 123-112 preseason win over the Minnesota Timberwolves in Ames, Iowa. The two-time All-Star guard finished with seven points and six assists, his first game since tearing his right Achilles in Game 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals.
For 16 months, Haliburton had waited on the sideline, growing more restless with each game. His first basket came after a 2-on-1 break with Pascal Siakam, which he finished with a crossover into a 15-foot jumper. The game also marked a homecoming at Iowa State University, his alma mater, and his first appearance at the college arena in six years. Students lined up the night before to get yellow shirts bearing his face and the nickname “Cyclone Hali.”
“I was tired as hell,” Haliburton said with a laugh after the game. “But even through that, I just kept feeling like, ‘Man, I’m playing again.'”
The adrenaline carried him through the night, though the rust showed. On Indiana’s first possession, he fired a no-look pass to Andrew Nembhard that sailed out of bounds.
“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’ hopes depend on that goal being within reach again. Haliburton’s last healthy stretch was one of the greatest clutch postseason runs in NBA history, with 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 he tore his Achilles, and the Thunder went on to claim the title.
While Haliburton recovered through the 2025-26 season, the Pacers won just 19 games. Indiana reached the conference finals in both 2024 and 2025, but the Basketball Power Index projects a modest 42 wins for the upcoming season, placing the Pacers 10th in the Eastern Conference.
“I don’t look too much into it,” Haliburton said. “Our whole team can relate to that. We’ve all felt that way one way or another.”
Indiana is the last team to have beaten the New York Knicks in a playoff series, and Haliburton is determined to lead the Pacers back to 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 Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis as a spokesperson for the Indiana Donor Network, which promotes organ donation. The five children he met had all received kidney transplants, and some were as young as six. At the table, they debated their favourite colours, and Haliburton admitted his was grey, which drew a reaction of disbelief from the kids.
Haliburton spent much of the past year in Indianapolis taking on community projects. He also helped the Pacers revive their charity softball game earlier this summer, featuring players from the Indianapolis Colts and Indiana Fever, before a crowd that packed Victory Field, a 12,000-seat Triple-A baseball stadium downtown.
His connection to the Midwest runs deep. He was born in Wisconsin, and he met and proposed to his wife, Jade, in Ames. That bond has only grown since Indiana traded for 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.”
The long road back
During his first vacation a few months after surgery, Haliburton could barely walk down the stairs of a rented house and needed help getting around. His surgeon had warned him, but the reality hit hard, and 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: “It’s such a crazy thing to say because it’s a basketball injury that no matter what … there’s a time put on it. You know you’re going to be good in that amount of time. We have the best doctors in the world, the best therapists, all those things. You know you’re going to be good, but it’s a scary thing.”
Haliburton spent most of his recovery in Indianapolis, sitting on the bench for home and road games even as the season slipped away. Partway through rehab, he also contracted shingles, which caused him to gain about 30 pounds and left him with severe facial swelling from the heavy medication. The illness kept him away from his teammates on the sideline.
“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, ‘Hey, I just got to do what’s right for me,'” 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 the lonely recovery, Haliburton would sometimes watch old highlights.
“Just to feel something,” he said. “I once could do that. I miss that feeling.”
He even rewatched the 2025 Finals, focusing on Game 4. The Pacers led the series 2-1, but the Thunder rallied from double-digit deficits 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.”
“Everybody always feels the summer is really long,” he said. “Well, I’ve had that for double, triple the amount of time everybody else.”
Rebuilding the habits
Haliburton does not want the Pacers to forget last season. Indiana finished with its fewest wins in franchise history after 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. And there’s no secret that there was a drop-off last year.”
Training camp has focused on restoring 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 that has run for four years. Coach Rick Carlisle lamented how long the summer had been, noting that it had been 5½ months since the Pacers’ last game in April.
“Reclaim” was the key word of the meeting. Carlisle acknowledged how important Haliburton’s return was but cautioned against treating him as a saviour.
“We’re a team that’s very reliant on one another,” Carlisle 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 main change is Ivica Zubac, who replaced the departed Myles Turner in a trade-deadline deal that cost Indiana the No. 5 pick in the draft. Team sources are confident the trade will reopen the championship window, though Zubac plays closer to the basket, offering different strengths than Turner, who stretched 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 may take time. Early in the preseason, Haliburton and Zubac struggled with their pick-and-roll timing, with Haliburton often rounding the corner before his new centre could roll.
“He’s so anxious to prove to people. He hates that people say he’ll have to be patient. He hates that,” 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 the growing pains showed in his first game back. He compared himself to a rookie, playing too fast and needing to slow down to let the offence find its rhythm. He tweaked his right ankle during the game and sat out the next preseason contest, 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.”
Several moments 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. It bounced just short, and he raced after it, crossing the ball between his legs midair before dunking with his right hand as Pacers staff erupted. Haliburton had a running bet with Erik Huddleston, Indiana’s strength and conditioning coach, that if he completed the dunk, he could skip his post-practice workout. It was a dunk he had not regularly made since he was a 20-year-old rookie. He later posted the video on social media.
A quieter moment a month later sent an even bigger signal. During a minicamp scrimmage in Los Angeles, Haliburton fell to the floor. Months earlier, the whole gym would have gone silent, waiting for him to get back up, just as had happened in Oklahoma City. This time, nothing happened. He got up, and the game continued.
“That,” he said, “makes me feel normal again.”