Tyrese Haliburton’s apparent Achilles injury suffered seven minutes into Game 7 of the Oklahoma City Thunder–Indiana Pacers NBA Finals hit like a sledgehammer to the chests of all NBA fans.
It was like a bad dream, a recurring nightmare to watch Haliburton go through the same stages of pain, realization, and grief that Damian Lillard and Jayson Tatum went through before him in these NBA playoffs. It was a gut punch of the most aggressive degree and inspired a numbness that only grew as the cruelty of what just happened settled in. Of what had been taken from the fans, the Pacers and especially Haliburton himself.
A cliché like “this is what dreams are made of” is thrown around quite a bit when big games happen, but this is what dreams are made of. Every basketball fan in the world grows up imagining what it would be like to play a winner-take-all Game 7 in the NBA Finals; to feel the pressure of that moment and rise to it to achieve the lifelong goal of a championship. Haliburton seemed ready to do just that despite the doubt his team battled along the way and the now-infamous poll revealing he did not have the respect of his peers. A trio of three-point shots swished in the opening five minutes and a primal scream at a Thunder crowd ravenous for a win suggested as much.
But then he took one wrong step. That’s all. One wrong step and it all came crashing down. His figure prone, hand slamming against the hardwood, face contorted into a picture of agony. The joyful conductor of the Pacers’ merry band, the king of conquering improbability this postseason, had suffered a fatal blow. It’s one of those injuries that reverberates throughout basketball, as championship-altering a development that can possibly exist.
Those sorts of things tend to cast long shadows over both the past and future.
The Thunder deserve all credit due as NBA champions and should be celebrated accordingly. It is important for everybody to resist the temptation to avoid any “asterisk” dialogue suggesting OKC was not a deserving title team. But it’s undeniable that Haliburton’s injury will completely change how these Finals are viewed.
Prior to that moment, this year’s series was quickly making its way up the rankings as one of the most competitive Finals of the century. The basketball was outstanding, featuring star-level performances from star-level talents and role players getting the whole world to rally around them with inspired, clutch minutes. Only two of the six games leading into Game 7 were blowouts in any sense. T.J. McConnell was the most popular basketball player in the world for a not-insignificant stretch!
It checked every box fans could hope for in an NBA Finals, in other words. A heavyweight bout with two teams playing at the top of their games, trading blows for nearly two straight weeks. And it was all supposed to culminate with, famously, the two best words in sports: Game 7. Leading into Sunday night, the excitement was palpable, and everybody wondered who might play the hero and push their team to the mountaintop, achieving immortality in the process.
Unfortunately, there was no hero. At least, that’s not how it will be remembered. There was only a villain, a villain that manifested in the form of Haliburton crumpling to the floor. It will loom large over all future discussions of this series. Not Haliburton’s Game 1 winner or McConnell’s electrifying third quarters or Jalen Williams’s 40-burger or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s Finals MVP. But the specter of the most brutal injury imaginable in the most brutal moment possible.
Words cannot truly describe how awful that is. Not just for Indy fans, either. Haliburton inspired a remarkable amount of public goodwill toward his game. He was the avatar for the 2024–25 Indiana Pacers—one of the most exciting playoff teams ever who ensured fans would look away because they proved time and time again that if they did, they would miss something historic. Instead of that energy sticking with everybody as the offseason kicks off, there’s a pall lingering caused by Haliburton’s injury that doesn’t seem likely to fade anytime soon.
As depressing as it all is, it’s even worse for the Pacers, who will be the primary victims of the fallout surrounding Haliburton’s misfortune.
Putting aside the morale blow of the season ending in basically the worst way possible (star player suffers serious injury in Game 7 that the team goes on to lose), next season is likely to be greatly affected for Indiana, too. Haliburton suffered the worst diagnosis: a torn Achilles, making it entirely possible he doesn’t see the court at all in 2025–26. Kevin Durant suffered a very similar injury in the ’19 Finals and was on track to miss all of the ’19–20 season, planning to return at the start of the ’20–21 campaign. That was all derailed by COVID-19 shutting down the league in ’20, but that general timeline wouldn’t be surprising to see from Haliburton, given the severity of the injury and his playing style.
How can Indiana build off the most successful season in franchise history without its star point guard? Well … that’s complicated. In one sense, the Pacers are well-suited to deal with the absence of Haliburton due to the traits that got them to the Finals in the first place. They have a strength-in-numbers mentality as a team where anybody can contribute at any time, and Rick Carlisle’s offense provides opportunities for all who can play within the scheme. It runs best when led by a point guard of the caliber of Haliburton, but can still work well enough without that sort of player. And defensively, there shouldn’t really be a big difference, given Haliburton’s talents are much more heavily weighted toward offense.
But as things stand, the Pacers project to be one of the many teams in the middle of the pack in the Eastern Conference, rather than a true contender. The East looked wide open after the injuries to Lillard and Tatum, the chaos unfolding with the New York Knicks and how the Cleveland Cavaliers’ season sputtered to an end. In a different world, the Pacers would be not just in the mix for the top seed but the favorites to earn it and repeat as East champs, expectations not held within Gainbridge Fieldhouse since the Reggie Miller era. It would have been a product of the Pacers’ strong team building and a vacuum created by poor injury luck around the rest of the conference. What an opportunity it could’ve been.
Instead, the Pacers will jostle with the likes of the shorthanded Boston Celtics, Detroit Pistons, Orlando Magic and others to carve out a postseason spot. They could change that by shaking up the roster and hunting for a star capable of replacing Haliburton’s production in his absence before teaming up with him upon his recovery—but is that an option? Putting aside how realistic it is to even find a player like that, Indy just made an NBA Finals run in large part because of the depth of talent the roster boasts. It would take a huge amount of confidence and hope to blow up what was just proven as a winning formula for something far more theoretical, and it is certainly debatable if that’s even a smart move. Nearly every important rotation player is younger than 30 and under contract through next year.
Keeping the status quo seems the far likelier path. Haliburton, Pascal Siakam, Andrew Nembhard and Obi Toppin are all signed through at least 2027. McConnell has an extension kicking in this offseason. Myles Turner represents a big decision; the stretch center is a free agent this summer and signing him may require the franchise to go into the luxury tax for the first time since ’06. Would ownership be willing to do that despite the strong possibility of not seeing Haliburton until the following year? If not, how far is the team willing to go to replace Turner versus biding their time and viewing ’25–26 as a gap year of sorts? That has its downsides, given Siakam will be 32 years old by season’s end. The Pacers own all their first-round picks, so they could be active on the trade market. Given their championship-contending core was built off the backs of two big trades, one figures the front office has a lot of confidence in that route, but again, it’s a very difficult step to take to blow up a roster that clearly works.
Haliburton’s injury is horrible on its own, and the ripple effects aren’t much better. The Pacers have to balance competing next season with a Finals berth seemingly up for the taking, with no true favorite in the East, against biding their time for Haliburton’s return. They have to decide whether to be aggressive or passive while the NBA moves very quickly around them. It’s a path filled with potholes and trip wires. Even worse, it’s quite possible that what looks like the right answer now proves to be very wrong in only a few months.
The shadow of the star point guard’s devastating misfortune will be impossible for the Pacers to escape. Every decision in the coming weeks and months will be a result of the injury. There are a few possibilities where Indiana navigates it perfectly and comes out the other side with a championship roster and a healthy Haliburton ready to dominate the East. There are many more possibilities where goes wrong. To say Indy is in an unenviable position is understating the matter.
Sometimes it is difficult to parse out the web of consequences that stems from such a significant injury. Not this time. It’s easy to trace the threads from Haliburton’s injury through the immediate future of the Pacers and how it impacts our view of the previous six games. Nothing rosy can be found. It’s all varying degrees of bad, sad, or both.
Haliburton will return. The Pacers may very well be back in the Finals once he does. The 25-year-old point guard will enjoy the best surgery and recovery the world has to offer. And in Indiana, at least, the still image of Hailburton waiting in the hallway to hug his broken-hearted teammates will last a whole lot longer than the soul-rending video of his injury.
Still. What a way to end a great season and a great series.
