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Tyrese Haliburton has a weird-looking jump shot. Compared to his NBA peers, in fact, almost nothing about his game marks him as a prototypical superstar. He’s not smooth like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He’s not a sicko like Luka Doncic. He doesn’t play with the same adamantine, dead-eyed style that makes Nikola Jokic so fascinating, and he’s also not a shit-talking alpha who wants to dunk you through the floorboards like Anthony Edwards.
But after adding yet another instant-classic moment to his increasingly legendary highlight reel—this time to cap off what was probably the craziest ending to an NBA Finals game since J.R. Smith forgot the score—Haliburton and the Indiana Pacers find themselves three wins from a championship.
To be in this position at all is a major feat. During the regular season, the Pacers had four different losing streaks of at least three games, were below .500 on New Year’s Eve, and generally were not considered a real threat to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy. Yet here we are, with Haliburton sinking an improbable shot in the dying seconds of a game for the fourth straight series, with the Pacers’ seemingly bulletproof opponent left searching for answers. It is, of course, just one game, but the Oklahoma City Thunder were generally out of sorts in their first showing of this championship series. (Who had Isaiah Hartenstein moving to the bench out of nowhere, Chet Holmgren playing only 24 minutes, and Belgian rookie Ajay Mitchell getting actual run in the NBA Finals?)
Losing to Tyrese Haliburton on a backbreaking shot is now a rite of passage for NBA playoff teams. It has happened to the Bucks, Cavs, Knicks, and now the Thunder (all on their home court, by the way) in the span of basically one month. Oshkosh, Wisconsin, stand up. Your most notable hometown kid, by far—apologies to the pageant of Wisconsin State Assemblypeople who are from there as well—is straight up one of the clutchest players in NBA history. Since the start of the 1997 playoffs, only a guy named LeBron James has more go-ahead or game-tying field goals in the final five seconds of regulation or overtime. Sure, Haliburton has the ball in his hand a lot at the end of games, and the Pacers’ penchant for playing tightly-contested games provides ample opportunities for this type of clip farming. But he’s also 25 years old and already has more of these than Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, or Kevin Durant, who have played 461 postseason games during that time frame.
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