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    • Pacers’ Tyrese Haliburton hits nine threes in sign of recovery from slump
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    Pacers’ Tyrese Haliburton hits nine threes in sign of recovery from slump

    Vaseline Posted on

    INDIANAPOLIS — Tyrese Haliburton’s celebration after his step-back 3-pointer 5:42 left in Monday’s second quarter wasn’t exactly a skip.

    The two-time All-Star point guard and Pacers franchise player wasn’t giddily waving his arms and whipping his head high in transition from offense to defense, as he did when he faced the Hawks and Pistons last year. In-Season Tournament, creating viral moments that inspired many a GIF. This time his head was looking at the ground and his movement across the floor looked a little more like a scissor kick jump, leading first with his right leg, then leading with his left and cross-legged in the air each time.

    Still, it seemed like Haliburton was trying to reference last year’s moments and send a sign to the Pacers faithful that he’s emerging from the darkness and things will be okay. Maybe he won’t be exactly the same player or person he was before a mostly brutal start to the season that often left him looking like the guy who earned third-team All-NBA honors a season ago, but maybe he would you can be better and stronger because you have gone through the experience.

    That step-back 3 was Haliburton’s fourth in Monday’s game, and he went on to hit five more 3s to finish with nine, his second-highest single-game mark of his career. He scored 34 points and dished out 13 assists, surrendering 64 of the Pacers points in a 114-110 win over the Pelicans at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. The win gave the Pacers back-to-back wins after three straight losses and helped them improve to 8-10.

    Haliburton had more points (35) and more assists (14) in the Pacers’ win over the Knicks on November 10, and he was more efficient in that game, shooting 11 of 18 from the field, 4 of 10 from a three-point range. and 9 of 11 on the line. However, his field goal attempts on Monday were a sign of his confidence and the Pacers’ dependence on him. More than in that win over the Knicks — when Bennedict Mathurin scored 38 points — or any other game this season, Haliburton carried the Pacers and was their go-to option when they needed to make something happen. The short-handed Pacers struggled to put away the even more short-handed Pelicans, so they continued to lean on Haliburton to make shots and he did, making a season-high 12 of 23 field goals and 9 of 18 three-pointers.

    “It feels good to win,” Haliburton said. “At the end of the day, I think that’s all that really matters. I think my individual performance and how I see it, I mean, if we win, I really don’t care. I’m frustrated with myself because I feel I feel that the games we have lost, if I were myself, we would win. I care more about us winning than what my numbers look like. But of course it feels good to see the ball go in.”

    Still, the ball not going in caused a clear crisis of confidence in Haliburton and caused the Pacers to lose games he thought they should win. His three-point shot isn’t his only asset, as he led the NBA in assists last season and directed the highest-scoring offense in the NBA’s last 40 years. Before last season, however, he was a reliable three-point shooter at 40% throughout his life, and when he makes shots, everything else becomes easier. The floor spreads out, giving him more opportunity to drive and find shooters in corners or on pick-and-pops, cutters along the baseline or roll big men off ball screens. It makes the Pacers much more dangerous in transition because opponents have to deal with the fact that he can pull up from deep and strike at any time, and taking that into account makes it difficult to do anything else the Pacers can do, to cover.

    But Haliburton struggled to get the shots falling from the very beginning of this campaign. He hit a dagger of a three-pointer in an opening night win over the Pistons, but only after missing his first eight threes. In the second game of the season, he went scoreless against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, missing all eight of his field goals, including seven three-point attempts.

    He then scored in double figures for the next six games, but never quite seemed to have his entire game together and the outside shot generally lagged behind everything else. He had brutal performances in losses in New Orleans, Charlotte and Orlando and appeared to have hit rock bottom during the Pacers’ recent three-game road trip. They needed someone to carry them, with second-year winger Ben Sheppard joining starters Aaron Nesmith and Andrew Nembhard on the injured list, but Haliburton went a combined 6-of-25 from the floor and 3-of-14 from the 3-point range range in losses to Toronto and Houston.

    Haliburton competed Friday in Milwaukee – an hour and a half from his hometown of Oshkosh, Wis. – and shot 37.5% from the floor and 28.4% from 3-point range on the season. He made just two of seven field goals and missed all four of his 3-point shots in the first half against the Bucks with dozens of friends and family members at the Fiserv Forum. Although he hit four of six threes in the second half, he was still dejected after the Pacers lost 129-117.

    Haliburton found the teachers eating him up, making something he had always loved feel like a chore.

    “What I have to do is maintain my joy for the game of basketball,” Haliburton said. “Everyone wants to say, ‘Be happy, have fun.’ Well, that’s hard to do when you’re not playing well or when you’re losing. But I think it makes the difference between happiness and joy. I’ve always had fun with the game of basketball and a love and appreciation for whatever I do I’ve been in this game my whole life. I think I just got caught up in it being frustrated with myself and having this kind of field coming at me and it was just tough for me to maintain that joy and that love and passion for it. the game of basketball because I really love what I do love this organization.

    Haliburton said his teammates helped him find his ground. After Sunday’s win over the Wizards, All-Star forward Pascal Siakam stopped Haliburton as he came off the floor to praise him for a strong performance in that game and tell him not to put so much pressure on made or missed shots, but that he had to play. play the game freely and trust themselves.

    Haliburton has been telling itself the same thing, and in the first two games of the Pacers homestand, it’s finally starting to break through.

    “Pascal has been really big,” Haliburton said. “That also goes for all my teammates, my coaching staff, family, coach, all that kind of stuff. To be honest, right now, in the time I wasn’t on the field, I have a lot of appreciation for believing and holding on Honestly, it has been. The most important thing for me is to continue to trust myself, to trust the Lord and not try to look in the mirror and say, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ Why wouldn’t it?”

    Haliburton looked to take a big step on Sunday with 21 points on 7 of 18 shooting, including 5 of 11 from 3-point land and nine assists in a win over the Wizards and Monday’s performance in the second night of a back-to-back -back just built on that. Since halftime of Friday’s game, Haliburton is shooting 23 of 48 from the field (47.9%) and 18 of 35 (51.4%) from three-point range. Before that he was 80 of 215 from the field and 33 of 120 from 3 in the season.

    It is imperative to note that these performances came against the worst team on record in the Eastern Conference in the Wizards and the worst in the West in the Pelicans. Haliburton can’t expect to be able to make shots as easily in the upcoming games as he did on Sunday and Monday. Still, he knows he has to stay out of the headspace that previous misses put him in.

    “People send me clips of what I looked like in the media and what I looked like on the field,” Haliburton said. “My body language is bad. My attitude is bad. It’s hard to get out of your situation when you’re like that. All my life I’ve been told to control what I can. I can’t control the ball goes every time in – technically I can – but it’s a make it or miss thing. But I can control my body language, I can control my energy and I can control my effort.

    And if Haliburton can keep these things in mind, he believes this too shall pass.

    “I know when I get past this, I’ll be laughing because this happened earlier this year,” Haliburton said. “No one will really remember or care. For me, it’s just trying to stay true to myself.”

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