Tyrese Haliburton, by all indications, is not going to be able to suit up for the Indiana Pacers for the upcoming NBA season as he continues to recover from a torn Achilles. But this doesn't mean that he's just about to fade from the spotlight. He continues to embrace his hater side that's been fueled by two years of the Pacers' burgeoning rivalry with the Milwaukee Bucks that was exacerbated this past offseason by Myles Turner's decision to spurn his home for 10 NBA seasons for their biggest rival.
Haliburton has clearly been rooting against not just the Bucks, but the entire state of Milwaukee at this point. With the MLB playoffs in full swing and the Milwaukee Brewers still duking it out against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS, Haliburton, during the Pacers' 124-108 home preseason loss against the San Antonio Spurs on Monday night, wore a Shohei Ohtani Dodgers uniform, as he is hitching his wagon to anyone that's opposing any Milwaukee sports team at the moment.
Tyrese Haliburton rocking a Shohei Ohtani jersey at tonight's Pacers-Spurs preseason game 🤩
Dodgers play Game 1 of the NLCS against the Brewers in Milwaukee in less than an hour. pic.twitter.com/BPY8xGLlzz
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) October 13, 2025
This is not the first time that Haliburton went out of his way to show his support for the team that's facing the Brewers in the postseason. Back in Saturday, when the Pacers faced the Oklahoma City Thunder in an NBA Finals rematch in preseason, Haliburton was wearing a Chicago Cubs uniform. The Cubs ended up losing that game, 3-1, marking the end of their 2025 campaign.
This time around, however, the team that Haliburton was rooting for actually won, with the Dodgers narrowly escaping Game 1 of the 2025 NLCS with a 2-1 win after Roki Sasaki nearly blew the game in the ninth after he allowed a run to cross the plate off a sac fly from Jackson Chourio.
Expect Haliburton to keep poking at Milwaukee sports as the rivalry between the Pacers and Bucks continues to turn from petty rivalry to deep resentment.
Pacers-Bucks rivalry, abridged
The Pacers and Bucks' rivalry began during the 2023-24 season; things got heated between these two teams in the regular season, with Giannis Antetokounmpo exploding in anger after the Pacers allegedly took the game ball even though he scored a career-best 64 points in a loss.
Since then, the Pacers and Bucks have been throwing blows. In the playoffs, the Pacers have gotten the upper hand over the Bucks in both 2024 and 2025, sending them home on both occasions in the first round of the postseason.
It's clear that these two teams don't like each other, and with Turner crossing the rivalry bridge, expect the games throughout the '24-'25 campaign between these two division rivals to be heated yet again.
