Tyrese Haliburton is already one of the best game directors in the world. Intelligent, patient, determined, with enormous resources and amazingly clear-eyed for his limited experience. It naturally demonstrates one of the crucial virtues: it makes any action far from seem easy, almost automatic. At just 22, the Indiana Pacers point guard leads the NBA in assists per game (11.2) as the season begins and his team is also a revelation.
But until recently, his career on the track stood in stark contrast to his resourcefulness off it. Because just a few months ago, Haliburton thought the NBA was something of a fairy tale. A universe without edges. He took it until the morning of February 8th when he got a call explaining the face of the business, which he didn’t know (yet).
On that call, his agent, Dave Spahn, informed him that he had been transferred. Haliburton, who was then in his second season with the Sacramento Kings, was having a sweet moment. He had 13 points and 17 assists against Oklahoma with less than 48 hours before the words that would change his life. And just a week earlier he had gone to 38 points and seven baskets in Philadelphia. There seemed to be no sporting reason for it. It wasn’t even the hardest thing to swallow: days before the move, the franchise assured him that his name was out of all sorts of negotiations.
“It’s a joke, isn’t it?” he replied to Spahn during this brief conversation. But it wasn’t. She had to pack her bags and head to Indiana. Journalist Alex Kennedy recounted that the player couldn’t help but cry for almost an hour after hearing the news. Sacramento had drafted him less than a year and a half earlier. And his subsequent outstanding performance justified that bet. But with a single shout, that thousandfold imagined future that reincarnated kings vanished entirely. All his innocence was buried there.
In this movement, the kings received the Lithuanian domantas sabonis, the interior piece on which they could restate their project. And the Pacers took the guy who’d spent most of his life under the radar (no major universities were interested in his services) and no longer had just his knowledge and talent to offer. Also the teachings that cause the first great scar.
A point guard by calling and dedication, Haliburton grew up watching his father play Magic Johnson video after Magic Johnson video until he confirmed the old adage that a shot makes one player happy but an assist makes two happy. But last summer, incidentally, his immense wealth-generating game found the ideal complement in the added motivation to assert himself.
Working with Drew Hanlen, one of the most respected individual technical coaches on the American scene, he honed his scoring instincts. In this way, he would adamantly note that every block-and-continue situation became not only a source of a pass but also his own complement. That every meter the defense conceded became an inalienable opportunity to start. This smallest concession was ultimately an appeal to him to be the executioner himself.
The result that can be observed today is fascinating. Haliburton has increased its pitching volume without losing an iota of brilliance by producing for others. In fact, he’s peaking in his young career in assists dished out for every ball lost (over four) and solving a gargantuan amount of pick-and-roll situations (the fourth-largest in the NBA) with the championship of the veteran who already everything knows the tricks. Only in his case without being 23 years old.
So if the launch of the campaign opened the door to the new Haliburton, the most incisive known (22 points per game in the month of October), what was seen in November has returned its version of the Mage King (12 assists per duel). only lose two balls in them).
This essentially desired mix is the seed of a monster that can illuminate one’s position for the next decade. That it might even have started.
Only 13 players in NBA history have managed to average at least 20 points and 10 assists per game over an entire season. Neither of them have done so, which again adds a 37% success rate in triples. But Haliburton could be on the way to debuting a new roster.
In the end, his basketball, neat and rational, these days taste the cocktail with a more dizzying and gluttonous side born – in part – from the pain of a disappointment. To make both scenarios compatible, Indiana, a country with a deep and enduring basketball flavor, could have found much more than an exceptional point guard. It already has the great pillar for its rebirth.
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