Tyrese Haliburton returned to game action on October 7, playing 16 minutes and finishing with seven points and six assists as the Indiana Pacers beat the Minnesota Timberwolves 123-112 in a preseason opener at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. It was his first NBA game since he tore his right Achilles in Game 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals.
The sweat from Haliburton’s Pacers jersey almost immediately soaked into his blue warmup shirt. For 16 months, the two-time All-Star guard had been patient, then less patient, then practically champing at the bit to leave the sideline and play in an NBA game.
The game also carried a second meaning. It was a homecoming for Haliburton, an Iowa State alumnus, and 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, labelled “Cyclone Hali.”
With 4:27 remaining in the first quarter, Haliburton enjoyed a moment that had nothing to do with the scoreboard: his first break.
“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.'”
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 possession, 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 his 16 minutes.
“I have my own internal expectations,” Haliburton told reporters. “But our goal is to win a championship. That has never wavered.”
A season that tested the core
The Pacers’ season, and Indiana’s road back to contention, depends on meeting those expectations. The last time Haliburton was healthy, he produced one of the great 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 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.
That record makes Indiana one of the most perplexing teams heading into the 2026-27 season. The Pacers reached the conference finals in both 2024 and 2025, yet they are projected to win a modest 42 games and rank 10th in the Eastern Conference, according to the Basketball Power Index.
“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.”
The Pacers are also the last team to beat the champion New York Knicks in a playoff series. Haliburton is determined to prove that Indiana can reclaim its place at the top of a more competitive East than the one he left.
“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
The zero in the middle of the jersey mock-up was orange, matching the trim on a jersey shaded blue in the middle. When Haliburton picked up the sheet of paper, he scoffed.
“Who drew this one?” he asked. “Orange and blue on a Pacers jersey?”
“Knicks colours,” his wife, Jade, said with a knowing smile.
With training camp still a few weeks away, the Haliburtons visited children at Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis. Haliburton was there as a spokesperson for the Indiana Donor Network, raising awareness of organ donation. The five children in attendance had all received kidney transplants.
Sitting around a table, Haliburton and the children, some as young as six, gathered sheets of paper to colour. A raucous debate broke out almost immediately.
“What’s your favorite color?” Haliburton asked his tablemates, launching an animated discussion.
“Red!” one child said. “Blue!” said another. “Yellow!”
“Rainbow!” another said, sparking a debate over whether all the colours could be considered one colour. He insisted they could.
“But is there a rainbow marker?” Haliburton asked, presenting the question as a colour-form of checkmate. When he suggested his favourite colour was grey, the children recoiled. “You never hear that, huh?” he said with a smile.
Haliburton spent much of the past year in Indianapolis, throwing himself into projects like these. He helped the Pacers revive their charity softball game earlier this summer, featuring players from the Indianapolis Colts and Indiana Fever. Fans packed Victory Field, a 12,000-seat Triple-A baseball stadium in downtown Indianapolis.
Haliburton’s connection to the Midwest runs deep. He was born in Wisconsin, and he met and eventually proposed to his wife in Ames. His bond with the region has only deepened since Indiana traded for him in 2022, which is why he has invested so much in the community.
“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, he could barely walk down the stairs of the house they had rented and needed help getting around when they left. His surgeon had warned him, but the reality still 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,” Haliburton said.
“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.”
He spent most of his recovery in Indianapolis, finding a seat on the bench for games at home and on the road, even as the season slid away. Midway through his rehab, he also developed a bad case of shingles, gaining 30 pounds and suffering severe facial swelling as a side effect of the heavy medication. The highly contagious illness kept him away from his teammates on the sideline, another blow in a long season.
“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 his lonely, arduous recovery, Haliburton would occasionally fire up some of his old highlights.
“Just to feel something,” he said. “I once could do that. I miss that feeling.”
He even rewatched the 2025 Finals. His focus stayed on Game 4, when the Pacers led the series 2-1, but the Thunder rallied from double-digit deficits in the second half. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 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.”
That thought stayed with him as he watched his team endure its worst season in franchise history, and as he realised how much of the conversation around the Pacers’ struggles centred on him, his injury, his recovery and his eventual return.
“Everybody always feels the summer is really long,” Haliburton 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. Injuries decimated the roster early, and the team began positioning itself for a better draft pick by the second half. By the end, it looked like a shell of the side that reached the Finals.
“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 rebuilding those habits. The night before the first practice, the team gathered at Buchanan’s house, on the floor of his indoor basketball court. It has become an annual tradition over the past four years, a chance for the Pacers to set their priorities before the season.
Coach Rick Carlisle lamented how long the summer had been. It had been 5½ months since the Pacers’ last game in April, and even longer since they had played a game with anything on the line.
“Reclaim” became the key word of the meeting.
Carlisle acknowledged how important Haliburton’s return was, but he 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. Ivica Zubac arrived to replace the departed Myles Turner in a trade-deadline deal that cost Indiana the No. 5 pick in the draft. Team sources say the Pacers are confident the deal will help reopen their championship window. They also acknowledge that Zubac, who plays closer to the basket, offers different strengths from Turner, a centre who stretches the floor from three-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 with Zubac could take time, as could his fit with Haliburton. The two have struggled with their timing in pick-and-roll sets early in the preseason, with Haliburton often rounding the corner before his new centre has a chance to 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 were evident in his first game back. He compared himself to a rookie, playing too fast and needing to slow down so the offence could 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 in the gym this summer gave him reason for confidence. One afternoon in late July, 13 months after his surgery, he took one dribble and tossed the ball toward the basket. As he raced after it, the ball bounced just short of the rim, and its upward trajectory almost carried him higher than he had been in years. Midair, he crossed the ball between his legs, rose toward the hoop and dunked with his right hand, as several members of the Pacers’ staff let out a collective scream.
Haliburton screamed loudest of all, releasing more than a year of pent-up frustration. He had a running bet with Erik Huddleston, Indiana’s strength and conditioning coach: if he completed the dunk, Haliburton could skip his post-practice workout.
It was a dunk Haliburton had not regularly made since he was a 20-year-old rookie. Later, he posted a video of it on his social media accounts, and the message to the rest of the league was obvious.
The dunk signalled Haliburton’s flashy arrival, but a quieter moment a month later sent an even louder signal. Before the season started, Pacers players held a minicamp in Los Angeles. During one scrimmage, Haliburton fell to the floor. A few months earlier, everyone in the gym would have gone silent, waiting for him to get back to his feet, just as they had that night in Oklahoma City.
This time, nothing happened. He got up, and the game continued.
“That,” he said, “makes me feel normal again.”