Tyrese Haliburton leads the Pacers past the Pistons in the 2024-25 NBA opener

Apparently, and for now, reading the tea leaves about Tyrese Haliburton will be one thing this season. What kind of thing? It was the same last season, and who knew what the Indiana Pacers would get from Haliburton on a game-by-game basis: Good Tyrese? Bad Tyrese? Is Tyrese missing?

In the Pacers' 115-109 win in Detroit to open the 2024-25 NBA season, the tea leaves were everywhere on Wednesday night: We saw the good Tyrese, we saw the bad Tyrese and, most of all, we wondered what happened to Tyrese, although he made the biggest 3-pointer of the game – and his only 3-pointer of the game in nine attempts – with 20.4 seconds left to secure the victory at the Pistons' home stadium, Little Caesars Arena. to seal.

The Pacers held on and then beat the Pistons – who appear to be one of the worst teams in the NBA yet again – and while that's not exactly the prettiest way to open the season, it's the alternative.

And it surpasses the ugly reality that befell Pacers center James Wiseman, a promising player this season, who was sidelined late in the first quarter with a non-contact left calf injury. Everyone is a doctor on Twitter where the immediate diagnosis was a ruptured Achilles tendon. As someone who has never attended medical school or even stayed in a Holiday Inn Express—but who has suffered a calf injury that wasn't caused by physical contact—I hold hope because what I saw from Wiseman came to mind injured I terribly known before suffered a torn gastrocnemius 12 years ago.

The gastrocnemius is the muscle in the calf, and when it pops it feels like someone just kicked you in the leg. They look around to see who did it, like Wiseman did before he took his place on the court.

After the game, Pacers coach Rick Carlisle told reporters in Detroit that Wiseman would undergo an MRI on Thursday in New York, where the Pacers play the Knicks on Friday.

What's wrong with James Wiseman? That's a question that needs to be answered in the next day or two.

What's wrong with Tyrese Haliburton? This could take a little longer.

Pacers score: Pacers rebound from a 12-point deficit to beat Pistons in season opener

Someone give Tyrese Haliburton a Snickers?

Yes, the Pacers beat the Pistons on Wednesday night. Yes, Tyrese Haliburton scored the game-winning goal. Why are you telling me things I've already written?

A nicer story about the game, something with a little more verve and a little less presence, would gloss over Haliburton's poor performance – and the largely disinterested way he played it. According to some people, climate change is also a hoax. Read any of these quacks if it helps you feel better.

Here on planet Earth, where the globe is warming and Tyrese Haliburton's star is cooling, we have to wonder what is happening here. Instead of coming into its own and asserting itself as the next big thing – and around this time last year, most of us here thought that would happen – Haliburton is showing signs of continued inconsistency.

And if the bar for him were different, if the over/under was being a really nice player with solid stats, then Haliburton would hit the over. He was a really nice player last season after the All-Star break. His scoring and assists dropped from about 22 points and 12 assists per game before the break to 17 and 9.6 afterward. His 3-point shooting fell from 40% range to 30% range. Still, those are nice numbers, right? Most players would take away 17 points, 9.6 assists and 30% shooting from 3-point range.

Insider Dustin Dopirak from March: Tyrese Haliburton's slide continues with the Pacers' tough loss

Haliburton is better than that. And even though this was just one game, he's better than his line Wednesday night of 15 points on 6-for-18 shooting – 1-for-9 on 3-pointers – with five rebounds, four assists and three ball losses. Well, he better be, or the Pacers have invested more than a quarter of a billion in, oh, Marcus Smart — minus the defense.

To be fair – and you may not like what you read, but it's fair – this was just a game. And studying a box score, let alone the first box score of the year, for clues about an 82-game NBA season is a fool's errand. So let's ignore the stats for a moment and instead focus on what we saw for most of this game:

Tyrese Haliburton stood in the corner like he was down.

You saw it, right? Andrew Nembhard had the ball in his hands early, and then it was late Bennedict Mathurin, and in between there were splashes from Haliburton, who recalled: Oh, right. I'm Tyrese Haliburton.

Late in the third quarter, after a slow first half in which he had to stay on the court at the halftime horn to take a few shots at the empty rims, Haliburton drove 30 feet for a dunk and then crossed over to Cade Cunningham to score Setting the ball, Pascal Siakam took the lead with a 3-point play and then dribbled into a 17-footer after a pick-and-roll with Enrique Freeman. On the other end, Haliburton deflected a pass and jumped out of bounds to save the steal.

What kind of candy bar commercial is this? Something like, “That’s not you You when you’re hungry.” Snickers, I think. So in those two minutes of the third quarter, it looked like someone gave Haliburton a Snickers.

The same thing happened late in the fourth quarter. After TJ McConnell and Mathurin did most of the heavy lifting to get the Pacers out of a 90-82 hole early in the fourth quarter, Haliburton perked up in the final minutes. He went for a basket and a 99-98 lead. He found Siakam with a bounce pass for a transition dunk to make the score 108-102. He hit the 3-pointer with 20 seconds left and then did a trick by doing a two-step while flexing his biceps – it's called the “We bring the boom” dance, and if you've never heard of it If you've heard that, consider yourself lucky – and then he shot two more free throws with seven seconds left.

All's well that ends well, right?

Secure. Let's get on with it.

Good luck to James Wiseman's Achilles

James Wiseman has something that can't be taught: greatness. Even in the NBA, he's just an unusually tall, strong, agile big man. He had racked up six points in less than five minutes before he looked around to see who had kicked him in the calf.

Wiseman could be an important player for the Pacers' second unit and a valuable backup starter in the inevitable absence of Myles Turner. But first we need some good news on that lower leg injury.

We have good news about the performance of Mathurin, who returned to the regular season after shoulder surgery last season and played with significantly more confidence than Rust. Mathurin scored 19 points on 5-for-8 shooting from the floor, getting to the finish line nine times (and scoring seven times).

McConnell was a typical TJ: 14 points and four assists in 16 minutes, most of his shots coming on trips into the lane, most of them successful (7-for-8 from the floor).

Siakam was the Robin the Pacers made him last season, goofing around and nearly notching a triple-double: 19 points, eight rebounds, nine assists. Turner had 20 points, nine rebounds and four blocks and scored 16 points in the first six minutes of the third quarter. That outburst would have pushed a good team's lead to 30, but on a night when Haliburton wasn't Batman – when Haliburton wasn't Haliburton – Turner's 16-point outburst only brought the Pacers to 75-69.

I'm telling you, this game was disturbing, it counted as a win but looked and felt like a bad night at the office.

Now we wait with hope for the test results on Wiseman's calf and then anxiously for Friday night in New York when we get a closer look at what kind of season this will be for Tyrese Haliburton. Will he put up decent numbers, or will he become the superstar that everyone has been expecting since his spectacular arrival late in the 2021-22 season – and that the Pacers ultimately paid for?

The tea leaves are waiting. Do these leaves change color?

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.

More: Join the text conversation with sports columnist Gregg Doyel for insights, reader questions and Doyel's behind-the-scenes look.

Tyrese Haliburton leads the Pacers past the Pistons in the 2024-25 NBA opener

ByVanessa

Someone give Tyrese Haliburton a Snickers?

Good luck to James Wiseman's Achilles

By Vanessa

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