A few weeks ago, a portion of the NBA fraternity attempted to saddle one of their leading peers with an indignity. This was not the product of a conspiracy, but the result of an anonymous poll, the data from which suggested that Tyrese Haliburton is the most overrated star in the league. Watch him play enough, and you’ll quickly understand why players would say that, when granted secrecy. It’s not because he isn’t great. It’s because he annoys the bejesus out of every opponent, leading an exhausting Indiana Pacers attack that runs up the score every night—and because he grins churlishly, motor-mouthing his skin-crawling conjectures, every time.
Imagine a man who dressed you down in front of an audience of millions, and told you that he was doing exactly that, the whole time. And smiling. Imagine, too, that his father was right there next to the stage, harmonizing wildly with those meanly victorious asides, waving towels with his son’s likeness embroidered on them. The father is willing to speak this way to anyone, including a two-time MVP who might be literally twice his size. This father; more importantly, this son… is not someone you have nice things to say about, when you are asked to comment privately on his merits.
On Tuesday night, after Haliburton had finished his masterpiece, he held a cover in front of his face, so that the audience wouldn’t know what kind of **** he was talking. His dad, banned from the arena for weeks for how aggressively he talked his own, was back in the building—though not allowed near the floor. He was close enough, however, to help propel Tyrese to the best game of his career: a 35-point, 15-assist, 12-rebound, 4-steal performance with an astonishing zero turnovers. All of that stat line is difficult to believe, but it’s the care with the ball that is truly mind-bending.
Haliburton’s passes are entirely their own thing. He is in the thinnest, most pure of passing air in the sport, up where only Nikola Jokic, LeBron James, and Luka Doncic have been. He’s able to release the ball from his hand at very odd times, anticipating and defying defenders’ contests with beguiling funk. But the ball does not arrive to its recipient that way; it is always perfectly on time and smoothly in rhythm. Shooters and rim finishers experience no hitch in his deliveries, quickly finishing what he has started.
Oftentimes, these recipients are all alone when they get the ball. That’s because their point guard consistently beats the coverage on fast breaks, and can also draw two defenders, jump them into the air, and fling the ball just before he lands, with no sacrifice in transportation quality. Rarely has a player made anyone think so much about “pass hang-time.” And as a ball-handler, he whips his frequent forward momentum into clean, lateral shooting opportunities with a torque that has him leaving his body.
He can score, too, of course. He’s got unusual form from distance, pushing the ball on its way more than he throws it—but it goes in, even from well beyond the arc. What’s more interesting are the things he does as a driver. While Haliburton has great open-court speed, his first step is hardly elite. As a result, he relies quite a bit on creativity and timing. He stops and starts, releasing floaters and scoop shots during sub-second openings. These playoffs, you’ve probably seen him dribble into the lane, fail to find daylight, and then dribble back out for something else.
Perhaps this is where the “overrated” label comes from, too. Maybe it’s not all sour grapes about how Haliburton behaves. In slower, more half-court scenarios where team defense holds up across five single-coverage matchups, he can look quite average, especially when guarded by the likes of Mikal Bridges. But consider that when he dribbles into and out of problems, he usually still finds his way, and consider that this slowing of Haliburton is dependent on his opponent’s ability to make basketball a certain way. In that battle, 25-year-old Tyrese wins much more than he loses. Try as you will to turn the game into a man-to-man battle, with plenty of time for eyes to meet eyes and bodies to mash into each other, harshly, but you probably won’t succeed so often.
That’s where Number Zero’s true genius lies. Few players who wear that digit on their jersey really live up to its conceptual grandeur, but this one does. Like a great band-leader, his solos are less important than how he inspires and directs those around him. It’s because of how he sees and enacts the game that his team is more a weather system than a collection of men. The New York Knicks, down 1-3 to his Pacers, don’t lack for chemistry themselves. But they have not subsumed their talents into a philosophy so large, nasty, and relentless as Haliburton’s Paradigm. We are on the verge of seeing if that doctrine can cut through the whole NBA.
