Pacers’ Tyrese Haliburton hits nine 3s in sign of recovery from slump

On By Littum

INDIANAPOLIS — Tyrese Haliburton’s celebration after his step-back 3-pointer with 5:42 left in the second quarter Monday wasn’t exactly a leap.

The Pacers’ two-time All-Star point guard and franchise player didn’t swing his arms giddily and swing his head in the air in transition from offense to defense like he did when he went out against the Hawks and Pistons in last year’s game. In-Season Tournament creating viral moments that inspired many a GIF. This time his head looked down at the ground and his movement down the floor was somewhat closer to a jump with a scissor kick as he led first with his right leg, then with his left, crossing his legs in the air each time.

Still, Haliburton seemed to try to reference last year’s moments and give a sign to the Pacers faithful that he’s coming out of the dark and will be OK. Maybe he won’t be the exact same player or person he was before a mostly brutal start to the season often left him looking like a shell of the man who earned third-team All-NBA honors a season ago, but maybe he could become better and stronger for having endured the experience.

That step-back 3 was Haliburton’s fourth of Monday’s game, and he hit five more 3s after that one to finish with nine, his second-highest single-game figure of his career. He scored 34 points and dished out 13 assists and had a hand in 64 of the Pacers’ points in a 114-110 win over the Pelicans at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. The win gave the Pacers back-to-back wins after three straight losses and helped them improve to 8-10.

Haliburton had more points (35) and more assists (14) in the Pacers’ win over the Knicks on Nov. 10, and he was more efficient in that game, shooting 11 of 18 from the field, 4 of 10 from 3-point range . and 9 of 11 at the line. But his field goal attempt Monday was a sign of his confidence and the Pacers’ reliance on him. More than in that win over the Knicks — when Bennedict Mathurin scored 38 points — or any other game this season, Haliburton carried the Pacers and was their go-to when they needed to make things happen. The short-handed Pacers struggled to put away the even more short-handed Pelicans, so they kept leaning on Haliburton to make shots, and he did, hitting a season-high 12 of 23 field goals and 9 of 18 3- pointers.

“It feels good to win,” Haliburton said. “At the end of the day, I think that’s all that really matters. I think my individual performance and how I look at it, I mean, if we win, I really don’t care. I’ve been frustrated with myself because I feel like the games we’ve lost, if I was myself, we’d win. I worry more about us winning than what my numbers necessarily look like, but of course it feels good to see the ball goes in.”

Still, the fact that the ball didn’t go in caused a clear crisis of confidence in Haliburton and helped cause the Pacers to lose games he thought they should win. His 3-point shooting isn’t his only asset, as he was the NBA’s leader in assists last season and the conductor of the highest-scoring offense in the NBA’s last 40 years. However, he was a reliable 40% 3-point shooter throughout his career before last season, and when he makes shots, everything else becomes easier. The floor spreads out, giving him more opportunities to drive and find shooters in corners or off pick-and-pops, cutters along the baseline or rolling big men off ball screens. It makes the Pacers much more dangerous in transition because opponents have to deal with the fact that he can pull up and hit from deep at any time, making it difficult to cover anything else the Pacers can do.

But Haliburton struggled to make shots fall from the very beginning of this campaign. He hit a dagger of a 3-pointer in an opening night win over the Pistons, but only after missing his first eight 3s. In the second game of the season, he went scoreless against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, missing all eight of his field goals, including seven 3-point attempts.

He scored in double figures for the next six games after that, but never quite seemed to get his game together, and the outside shot generally lagged behind everything else. He had brutal performances in losses in New Orleans, Charlotte and Orlando, and he appeared to hit something of a rock bottom during the Pacers’ recent three-game road trip. They needed someone to carry them with sophomore wing Ben Sheppard joining starters Aaron Nesmith and Andrew Nembhard on the injured list, but Haliburton went a combined 6 of 25 from the floor and 3 of 14 from 3-point range in losses to Toronto and Houston.

Haliburton entered Friday’s game in Milwaukee — an hour and a half from his hometown of Oshkosh, Wis. — shooting 37.5% from the floor and 28.4% from 3-point range on the season. He made just 2 of 7 field goals and missed all four of his 3-point shots in the first half against the Bucks with dozens of friends and family members at the Fiserv Forum. Although he hit 4 of 6 3s in the second half, he was still down after the Pacers lost 129-117.

Haliburton noticed that the misses were eating him up and making something he had always loved feel like a chore.

“What I have to do is keep my joy for the game of basketball,” Haliburton said. “Everybody wants to say, ‘Be happy, have fun’. Well, it’s hard to do when you’re not playing well or you’re losing, but I think that’s the difference between happiness and joy It does I’ve been in this game my whole life, I think I’ve been caught up in getting frustrated with myself and this is getting into job territory a little bit and it’s weighing on me been great for me to keep that joy and that love and passion for basketball because I really love it, I doing, I love my teammates.

Haliburton said his teammates have helped him find grounding. After Sunday’s win over the Wizards, All-Star forward Pascal Siakam stopped Haliburton coming off the floor to praise him for a strong performance in that game and tell him not to put so much pressure on shots made or missed, but to play the game freely and trust oneself.

Haliburton has told himself the same thing, and in the first two games on the Pacers’ home court, it’s finally starting to break through.

“Pascal has been really great,” Haliburton said. “So are all my teammates, my coaching staff, family, coach, all of that. Honestly, I give myself a lot of credit right now for, in my time off the field, believing and keeping the faith. Honestly, that’s been the biggest thing for me is to keep trusting myself, trusting the Lord and not trying to look in the mirror and say, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ Why shouldn’t it?”

Haliburton looked to take a big step on Sunday with 21 points on 7-of-18 shooting, including 5-of-11 from 3-point land and nine assists in a win over the Wizards and Monday’s performance in the second night of a back-to- back just built on it. Since halftime of Friday’s game, Haliburton is shooting 23 of 48 from the field (47.9%) and 18 of 35 (51.4%) from 3-point range. Before that, he was 80 of 215 from the field and 33 of 120 from 3 on the season.

It is necessary to note that these performances came against the worst team records in the Eastern Conference in the Wizards and the worst in the West in the Pelicans. Haliburton can’t expect to have as easy a time getting shots in the upcoming games as he had Sunday and Monday. Still, he knows he has to stay out of the headspace that previous misses put him in.

“I have people send me clips of what I’ve looked like in the media and what I’ve looked like on the field,” Haliburton said. “My body language stinks. My attitude stinks. It’s hard to get out of what you’re into when you’re like that. I’ve been told my whole life to control what I can. I can not control whether the ball goes in every time – technically I can – but it’s a make or miss league, but I can control my body language and I can control my effort.

And if Haliburton can remember these things, he believes this too will pass.

“I know when I get past this, I’m going to laugh that this happened earlier in the year,” Haliburton said. “Nobody’s really going to remember or care. For me, it’s just trying to stay true to myself.”