Tyrese Haliburton returned to the court for the Indiana Pacers on Oct. 7, playing 16 minutes in a 123-112 preseason win over the Minnesota Timberwolves in Ames, Iowa, his first game back since tearing his right Achilles during Game 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals. He finished with seven points and six assists. The game was also a homecoming at Iowa State University, his alma mater, and his first appearance at the college arena in six years.
For 16 months, the two-time All-Star guard had waited on the sideline, growing more restless with each game he watched from the bench. On Oct. 7, he finally got back into a game. With 4:27 left in the first quarter, he entered and immediately felt the rush of being back on the floor.
“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 eager Haliburton threw a no-look pass to Andrew Nembhard that sailed out of bounds. He shook that off on the next trip. 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 night. He said his internal expectations were high, but the goal remained clear.
“I have my own internal expectations,” Haliburton said. “But our goal is to win a championship. That has never wavered.”
A season built on what comes next
The Pacers’ season, and their road back to contention, depends on how well Haliburton returns to form. The last time he was healthy, he delivered one of the most memorable clutch postseason runs in NBA history, hitting 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 win the title. While he spent the 2025-26 season recovering, the Pacers won just 19 games.
Indiana is one of the most puzzling 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 in the Basketball Power Index.
Haliburton did not dwell on the projections.
“I don’t look too much into it,” he said. “Our whole team can relate to that. We’ve all felt that way one way or another.”
The Pacers are the last team to beat the champion New York Knicks in a playoff series. Now, in an Eastern Conference that looks more competitive than the one he left, Haliburton is determined to prove Indiana can reclaim its place at the top.
“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.”
Off the court, a different perspective
Before training camp opened, Haliburton spent time at Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis. He appeared as a spokesperson for the Indiana Donor Network to raise awareness about organ donation. The five children he met were all kidney transplant recipients, some as young as 6.
Seated around a table with sheets of paper and crayons, Haliburton asked the kids about their favorite colors, and a lively debate quickly followed. One said red, another said blue, and one insisted rainbow was the answer. When Haliburton said his favorite color was gray, the kids were stunned.
“You never hear that, huh?” he said with a smile.
Haliburton spent much of the past year in Indianapolis taking on projects like this one. Earlier this summer, he helped the Pacers revive their charity softball game, which featured players from the Indianapolis Colts and Indiana Fever. Fans packed Victory Field, a 12,000-seat Triple-A baseball stadium in downtown Indianapolis.
His ties to the Midwest run deep. He was born in Wisconsin, met his wife, Jade, in Ames, and proposed there. His connection to the region has only grown since the Pacers acquired him in a trade in 2022.
The injury changed how he sees his life.
“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.”
During his first vacation a few months after surgery, he could barely walk down the stairs of a rented house and needed help getting around when they left. His surgeon had warned him about the recovery, 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.
He also acknowledged the uncertainty that comes with a major injury.
“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,” he said. “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 and sat on the bench for games at home and on the road as the season slipped away. Mid-rehab, he also developed a severe case of shingles, which caused him to gain 30 pounds and suffer serious facial swelling from the heavy medication. The contagious illness kept him away from his teammates on the sideline, adding another setback to a difficult season.
Buchanan praised how Haliburton handled the long road back.
“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 stretches of rehab, Haliburton sometimes watched 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. The Pacers led the series 2-1, but the Thunder rallied from a double-digit second-half deficit, and 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.”
As he watched his team endure the worst season in franchise history, he noticed how much of the conversation centered on him, his injury, his recovery and his 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 by the second half the team was positioning itself for a better draft pick. By season’s end, it looked like a shadow of the group 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 centered on rebuilding those habits. The night before the first practice, the team gathered at Buchanan’s house, on the indoor basketball court in his home. The gathering has become an annual tradition over the past four years, a chance for the Pacers to set their priorities for the season.
Coach Rick Carlisle lamented how long the summer had been. It had been 5½ months since the team’s last game in April, and even longer since it had played a game that mattered.
“Reclaim” became the key word of the meeting.
Carlisle acknowledged how important Haliburton’s return is but cautioned against treating him as a savior.
“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 major 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 say the Pacers are confident the move will help reopen their championship window. They also acknowledge that Zubac, who operates closer to the basket, brings different strengths than Turner, a center who stretches the floor with 3-point shooting.
“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, including the chemistry between Zubac and Haliburton. Early in the preseason, the two struggled with timing in pick-and-roll sets, as Haliburton often turned the corner before Zubac could roll.
“He’s so anxious to prove to people. He hates that people say he’ll have to be patient,” Buchanan said. “He’s like, ‘I’ve been out 16 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 so the offense could find its rhythm. He tweaked his right ankle during the game and sat out the next preseason contest. An MRI confirmed that 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 confidence. One afternoon in late July, 13 months after surgery, he took one dribble and tossed the ball toward the basket. As he chased it, the ball bounced just short of the rim inside the Pacers’ practice facility. Midair, he crossed the ball between his legs and rose to dunk with his right hand while members of the staff let out a collective scream.
Haliburton screamed the loudest, releasing more than a year of pent-up emotion. He had a running bet with Erik Huddleston, Indiana’s strength and conditioning coach: 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 a video of the dunk on his social media accounts, and the message to the rest of the league was clear.
A quieter moment a month later may have sent an even stronger signal. Before the season, the Pacers held a minicamp in Los Angeles. During a scrimmage, Haliburton fell to the floor. A few months earlier, everyone in the gym would have gone silent, waiting for him to get back up, just as they had in Oklahoma City.
This time, nothing happened. He got up, and the game continued.
“That,” he said, “makes me feel normal again.”