It’s already been a wild NBA playoffs, but there may be no greater story than what the Indiana Pacers are doing. Just last night they knocked off the No. 1 seed in the East, the Cleveland Cavaliers, in convincing fashion with a gentleman’s sweep. That followed up a first-round performance that may have ended the Giannis Antetokounmpo era in Milwaukee. Now they await the winner of Celtics-Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals. It’s the second straight year they’ve made it this far.
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The Pacers are playing great team ball. They’ve been led by point guard Tyrese Haliburton, who has seemingly leveled up after being voted the most overrated player in the NBA by his peers. Haliburton drove for the game-winning layup with just over a second left in overtime to finish the Bucks in Round 1, then hit a three with the same amount of time left to put the Cavs in an 0-2 hole that they never recovered from.
On last night’s episode of Nightcap, Shannon Sharpe and Chad Johnson called out how silly it was to call any NBA player, let alone one as effective and accomplished as Haliburton, overrated. As Sharpe pointed out, any pro can make another pro look foolish on any given day, and Haliburton isn’t just any pro.
Johnson believes that the lack of respect toward Haliburton is because his game and his shot isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing. “His shot look like Shawn Marion, it’s not pretty, it looks like Horace Grant when he shoots, it’s just what it is, but he gets the job done, in not a beautiful way.”
Hali’s success launched Sharpe and Johnson into an analysis of why the greatest athletes of all time, like Tom Brady and Michael Jordan, became that way. The answer they came up with was consistency in their preparation and a focus on being as great as they could be.
“Jordan didn’t have no race car team. He didn’t have all this stuff while he played,” Sharpe said. “Kobe was not trying to win no Oscar while he played. He had a singular focus.”
You never hear about Haliburton doing anything outside of basketball, because improving his game has been his sole focus since entering the league. As Sharpe said, Jordan got into racing after his career was done. Kobe started making movies after he hung his sneakers up.
Sharpe relayed a story his old coach Brian Billick once told him about why movie stars marry other movie stars. “The other knows what it’s like to live in that world. They know what it’s like to jump in and out of character, lock in for six months and be something,” he said. That’s the same reason why the greats hang with the greats, in sports or any other walk of life.
Haliburton hasn’t been distracted by being called overrated. In fact, it seems to be fueling him as he proves the doubters wrong. That’s a quality he shares with the greats who have come before him. When Hali slid to 12th in the draft, he just kept working. When he was traded away from the Kings, he kept on improving. Now he has the Pacers on the verge of their second NBA Finals appearance in franchise history.
Haliburton spent this summer winning an Olympic gold medal in Paris as part of Team USA. He didn’t get a ton of playing time on that team, but he got to be close to some of the other best players in the league, which had to confirm to him that he belonged there. Now his play on the court is proving that he belongs in that kind of company.
