Tyrese Haliburton is the brilliant, driving force behind the current iteration of the Indiana Pacers. The 23-year-old point guard has emerged as one of the best playmakers in basketball and a hyper-efficient scorer.

Haliburton not only has the playmaking mastery and shooting knack to lead a strong offense but also the mentality to be the Pacers' focal point and leader as they grow into a playoff contender. He told SLAM Magazine's Deyscha Smith that he gets a massive kick out of proving people wrong.

“I’ve battled and clawed and fought my way to get to where I’m at,” Haliburton said, via SLAM. “Now criticism and all that stuff means nothing to me because when I was a kid, nobody would have cared enough to even give me criticism. So the fact that I get it now is pretty cool. I just love proving people wrong. I don’t know, I love negativity. I love seeing negativity on Twitter. I love hearing people say negative comments about my game. It always interests me. It could be somebody with, like, no followers, I just want to prove them wrong.”

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Haliburton's first All-Star campaign featured a notable instance of being doubted when Wally Szczerbiak, a former NBA All-Star and current commentator for New York Knicks broadcasts, called him a “wannabe, fake All-Star” last season. With 20.7 points, 10.4 assists, 3.7 rebounds and 1.6 steals per game while shooting 49.0 percent from the field and 40.0 percent from deep, he made it clear that there’s nothing fake about his stardom.

The Pacers have a mix of veterans (Buddy Hield, Myles Turner, Bruce Brown) and young players (Bennedict Mathurin, Andrew Nembhard, rookie Jarace Walker) that could make them a playoff team next season. That's the main goal for Haliburton, who pointed out that he has only been on losing teams so far in his three-year NBA career.

This offseason, the Pacers signed Tyrese Haliburton to a max contract, a reward for his hard work and talent that he took a good amount of time to celebrate (rightly). By every indication, that contract will age gracefully and Haliburton will be the Pacers' franchise player for a while to come.