Tyrese Haliburton and the Indiana Pacers are currently in the midst of a 2024 offseason that would figure to see the team want to mostly stand by and run it back with the roster that got them to the Eastern Conference Finals a season ago. Haliburton emerged as one of the game's elite players from the guard position in 2023-24, starting the All-Star team and helping lead Indiana on a deep playoff run despite his individual production floundering throughout the season.
Haliburton was rewarded for his efforts with a spot on the Team USA Olympics team, where he is currently tuning up with his teammates in anticipation for the Olympics and Paris, and recently, he broke down why he feels a chip on his shoulder heading into the 2024-25 NBA season.
“I'm coming into this year, and whether it's the case or not, viewing it like everybody thinks my success in the first half of last season was a fluke, and I got to prove it again,” Haliburton said, via Andrew Grief of GQ on X, the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter. “And that's just who I am and that's how I'm just cut that way. That's the fun part about it for me: it's just another chip on my shoulder, [added] to the thousands that are already there.”
“…I’m greedy, I want to be great,” he added. “So, I mean, what is there to be satisfied about?”
Was the Pacers' run a fluke?
Two things can be true at once: The Pacers would probably have gone home in the first round in the playoffs if not for a wild amount of injuries to their opponents in this past postseason, but they also can only play who is in front of them and deserve credit for taking advantage of the opportunities they were given.
Haliburton saw his individual numbers take a drastic decline about halfway through the regular season after suffering a hamstring injury, but the All-Star was able to pick things back up at least somewhat in the playoffs, hitting a game winner in Game 3 vs the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round and overcoming a rough first couple of games to torture the New York Knicks in round two.
Next year, virtually no one will be picking Indiana to return to the NBA's final four, with teams like the Knicks, Philadelphia 76ers, Boston Celtics, and others figuring to be firmly ahead of them in the race.
Just don't tell that to Haliburton.
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