Tyrese Haliburton
What is Tyrese Haliburton known for in basketball?
How did Tyrese Haliburton start his basketball career?
What were some key moments in Haliburton’s 2025 playoff run?
News •
Tyrese Haliburton (born February 29, 2000, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, U.S.) is an American basketball player who in 2025 led the Indiana Pacers to the NBA Finals. A 6-foot 5-inch (1.96-meter) point guard, he is known for playing the game at a frenetic pace and for being an expert, selfless passer, earning him comparisons to legendary guard Steve Nash. Haliburton is loved by fans and reviled by opponents for his exuberant, trash-talking persona.
Childhood and college
Haliburton was raised by his parents, John and Brenda Haliburton, alongside two elder half brothers and one younger brother. As a toddler, he accompanied his father, who worked as a middle-school basketball coach, to practices and soon began learning the sport himself. By elementary school Haliburton was single-mindedly focused on one day making it to the NBA. He played on the varsity basketball team starting as a freshman at Oshkosh North High School, and during his senior year the squad went 26–1 and won a state championship. Although he was the team’s best player—scoring 30 points in the title game—Haliburton was considered a three-star (out of five) college prospect and decided to attend Iowa State University in Ames.
At the beginning of the 2018–19 season Haliburton expected to be a backup, but an injury to Iowa State’s starting guard gave him an opening. He quickly distinguished himself as a prolific playmaker who is able to keep turnovers to a minimum—valuable traits that would later be his calling card in the NBA. In the 10th game of the year, he accumulated 17 assists, a single-game school record. In the summer after his freshman year, he was invited to join the U.S. national team for the FIBA Under-19 Basketball World Cup in Heraklion, Greece. Haliburton raised his profile further by leading all players in assists and helping the U.S. secure a gold medal. In his second collegiate season, he boosted his production, averaging 15.2 points, 6.5 assists, and 2.5 steals per game. Although he injured his wrist in February 2020 and subsequently missed the rest of the season, he had proved his potential and declared for the NBA draft. In November, in a remote event held amid the COVID-19 pandemic, he was selected with the 12th pick by the Sacramento Kings.
NBA career
Sacramento Kings
Haliburton performed well in his first year as a professional, mostly coming off the bench to support the Kings’ star guard, De’Aaron Fox. He was named third in Rookie of the Year voting, behind LaMelo Ball of the Charlotte Hornets and Anthony Edwards of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Haliburton moved into the starting lineup in his second year and appeared to be excelling in the role. But Sacramento, having decided that his skill set overlapped too much with that of Fox, surprised fans and league critics by trading Haliburton to the Indiana Pacers in exchange for, among other players, All-Star center Domantas Sabonis in February 2022.
Indiana Pacers
Within weeks of his arrival in Indiana, Haliburton had begun to remake the Pacers in his own image as a team defined by sharing the ball readily, outrunning opposing teams on fast breaks, and exuding brash fearlessness. Indiana finished the 2021–22 season with a 25–57 record, but after a full year with Haliburton as its leader the team improved to 35–47 in 2022–23. That season Haliburton was voted to the All-Star team for the first time and averaged a career-high 20.7 points per game.
Haliburton had an even better year in 2023–24, during which he led the league with 10.9 assists per game, was again named an All-Star, and was voted to the All-NBA third team. He also helped the Pacers reach the final of the inaugural in-season tournament, later named the Emirates Cup, giving viewers a hint of Indiana’s growing potential to be a title contender. The team finished the year with a 47–35 record. In the following playoffs, the sixth-seeded Pacers overcame the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round and the New York Knicks in the second round. In the third game of the series against the Knicks, Haliburton scored 35 points, a playoff career high. However, in the second game of the Eastern Conference finals series against the eventual champions, the Boston Celtics, he injured his hamstring. He missed the following two games, and the Pacers were swept. In the offseason Haliburton was a member of the U.S. men’s Olympic team that won a gold medal at the Paris Games, although he played sparingly.
Haliburton began the 2024–25 season on an uncharacteristic shooting slump. He eventually returned to form, helping Indiana to a 50–32 record and earning All-NBA third team honors. In the playoffs, Haliburton sought to prove that the Pacers’ run to the conference finals the previous year had not been an aberration. That goal was emphatically achieved, as the Pacers made it to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2000, a run that was punctuated by several heroic performances by Haliburton. Most notably, he drove against Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Bucks for a game-winning layup in the first round, made a go-ahead three-pointer against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the second round, and orchestrated a comeback from 17 points down in the fourth quarter to win in overtime in the opening game against the New York Knicks in the conference finals.
