The NBA regular season is less than a month away from tip-off, but sadly, fans won’t be watching the breakout star of last season’s playoffs. Tyrese Haliburton, who over the course of four series this spring put forth arguably the most clutch postseason performance of all-time, is going to miss the entire year after tearing his Achilles in Game 7 of the Finals.
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Haliburton’s injury was part of a disturbing trend, as Damian Lillard and Jayson Tatum had also gone down shortly before that with their own Achilles tears. Now he faces a long road back to the court, a process made more difficult by the fact that he was so close to claiming the NBA’s ultimate prize.
Though he won’t be suiting up anytime soon, Haliburton has stayed in the public eye. He’s been spotted at multiple Indiana Fever games as the WNBA team makes a playoff push, and today he’s debuting his new Hali 1 signature shoe. Yesterday, he appeared on Stephanie McMahon’s What’s Your Story? podcast, a natural fit since he’s also made a few WWE appearances.
Haliburton admitted that getting through an ordeal like this is more than one person can handle. “It takes a village,” he said. “It’s not just me. I have a great support system. My family has been there every step of the way, all my close people call me very regularly to check on me.”
That doesn’t mean it’s an easy thing to process. When you work your entire life to become one of the best players in the world, then it’s cruelly taken away from you during the single most important game of your career, it’s going to have an effect.
“I have my days where I’m just sitting there and I’m thinking about it and I just kind of break, you know what I mean?” he said. “There’s definitely been those days.”
Back in the old days, mental health wasn’t something that was talked about in general, and certainly not with athletes. “Rub some dirt in it” was the prevailing philosophy if an athlete got hurt, but times have changed for the better.
“Over the last two years, being able to be as vulnerable as I can, and being able to take my mental health more serious,” he explained.
“Our league has done a great job of being able to take that more serious. For me, it’s like talking to my sports therapist, being able to voice those things, get those out, ’cause that’s just the best thing for me,” the Pacers star asserted.
“If I can get it out and kind of say it, admit to where I am and how I feel in certain moments, I feel like it’s easier to get by,” he continued, adding, “I feel like it’s important to understand that it’s OK to have bad days. I’m a human being, and I feel like that’s made this easier to deal with for sure.”
The mental toughness Haliburton showed in putting the 4-seeded Pacers on his back and carrying them to within a game of a title will serve him well in his rehab. It seems like a long time ago now, but right when the playoffs started, he found out that he was named the league’s most overrated player in an anonymous poll conducted by The Athletic.
Haliburton used that as fuel to crush everyone in front of him. If he keeps that same energy, he’ll be back and better than ever next season.
