Tyrese Haliburton has received plenty of acclaim during his first five years in the league. He’s already a two-time All-Star, Olympic Gold medalist, was named to the All-NBA team last season with a good chance to make it again this year, and won the 2024 assist title.
He’s also the most overrated player in the NBA, according to The Athletic’s annual anonymous player poll. Haliburton’s name came up the most frequently among the 90 players that responded to the outlet’s question, showing up on 13 players’ ballots.
Haliburton seemed to use the slight as motivation in the Pacers’ Game 2 win over the Bucks, scoring 21 points to go along with 12 assists in the team’s 123-115 win. He didn’t need that performance in order to prove what others who are paying attention already know — he is well-deserving of all of the praise that he’s received throughout his career.
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Here are 13 reasons why the 13 anonymous players in the league are dead wrong on their evaluation of Haliburton.
Tyrese Haliburton is not overrated
Tyrese Haliburton is a brilliant passer
Haliburton’s assist totals speak for themselves. He’s averaged 10.1 per game since joining the Pacers. The level of creativity on them is something that words can’t describe. He throws passes that few would even think up.
He gets the ball through windows that are smaller than Stephen A. Smith’s basketball knowledge.
You never know what kind of pass Haliburton is going to try. He even won a game this year by throwing an inbounds pass off Derrick White’s back, allowing the Pacers to run out the clock.
Tyrese Haliburton never turns the ball over
Haliburton is creating a ton of scoring opportunities for teammates with those audacious passes. What’s even more remarkable is that he takes those risks while almost never turning the ball over.
Of his 33 double-digit assists games this season, he’s had two or less turnovers in 27 of them. He had an 18-assist game this year, turning it over only once. There has quite literally never been a player in the modern era with his level of passing and mistake-free play.
Tyrese Haliburton this season:
673 assists
120 turnoversThe most assists in a season with fewer than 125 turnovers since the merger. pic.twitter.com/hKIItrxG1h
— StatMuse (@statmuse) April 15, 2025
Tyrese Haliburton keeps the Pacers playing fast
It’s no secret why the Pacers offense is so good. They try to push the pace and get easy points in transition.
Most teams in the league are trying to do the same. Few are able to, because there are only a handful of players who can consistently get their teams to play that style.
Watch Haliburton on the broadcasts, and you will see that he is always keeping his momentum heading up the court. He’s begging teammates to inbound the ball faster to him, trying to grab the ball out of referees’ hands, and keeping his eyes up to hit ahead in transition. Everybody talks about doing those things. Haliburton actually does it, every single time.
Tyrese Haliburton makes teammates better
Haliburton is an extremely unselfish player, too much so at times. He has been told throughout his career that he needs to be more aggressive. That is a benefit to teammates. He will always pick the assist over scoring himself on fast breaks, pumping up everyone’s scoring with his ability to ignite in transition.
Tyrese Haliburton is a clutch player
Haliburton has hit several game-winners throughout his career, including this season. His four-point play to win a game in overtime may have been the shot of the year.
TYRESE HALIBURTON OH MY GOODNESS!!!!
FADING TRIPLE TO TIE IT AND THE FOUL 🔥🔥
Get to TNT for the final seconds of Bucks/Pacers! pic.twitter.com/o3Pr7qFRw9
— NBA (@NBA) March 12, 2025
The stats back up how good he’s been late in games this season. He shot a very strong 47.1 percent from the field and 41.0 percent from 3 in clutch situations, per NBA Stats. Unsurprisingly, he was also very careful with the ball, recording 25 assists to just five turnovers.
Tyrese Haliburton is a deadly shooter
Haliburton has canned 39.2 percent of his 3’s, which is an impressive number on its face. That’s even better when you consider the degree of difficulty on those shots.
Rather than taking easy spot-ups, he’s creating most of those 3’s out of thin air. He averaged 7.7 attempts from deep this season, and 5.7 of them came off the dribble. He connected on a stellar 37.4 percent of those looks, which was even better than Steph Curry’s 36.6 percent mark.
Tyrese Haliburton’s jump passes are changing what we think of as good and bad
Many of us were taught to never jump in the air for a pass. Haliburton has made that his signature move, using it to manipulate defenders and extend his passing windows. Pacers writer Caitlin Cooper once hand-tracked all of his passes, proving that they were indeed hugely positive plays and leading to the t-shirt slogan that jump passes are good now.
MORE: Meet Caitlin Cooper, the NBA writer who actually focuses on basketball
Tyrese Haliburton can get buckets
A common criticism about Haliburton is that he doesn’t strike fear into defenders as a scorer like some of the other stars in the league. It’s true that he’s not one of the absolute top bucket-getters in the league, but he does have a good bag that he can get to in order to create looks.
Haliburton relies more on the threat of his pull-up to get shots off. He has a nasty crossover that he can use to create space, like he did against one of the better defenders in the league in Ausar Thompson earlier this year.
Tyrese Haliburton probably doesn’t get enough hype
As good as Haliburton is, he is rarely featured by the league outside of All-Star games and the playoffs.
The Pacers had only 14 nationally televised games this season, ranking in the middle of the league. Haliburton is mostly free of controversy, making him invisible on most of ESPN’s debate shows. He played college basketball at Iowa State and was taken towards the end of the lottery. If he had gone to Duke and gotten drafted by the Lakers, he’d be in headlines every day. Instead, he quietly thrives in Indiana.
Tyrese Haliburton is modest
Haliburton isn’t above poking fun at himself. He barely played during that Olympic Gold medal run, and he saw what people were saying about him during that summer. Rather than getting upset, he leaned into the jokes. He had the best one of anybody.
When you ain’t do nun on the group project and still get an A🏅 pic.twitter.com/xpshYZhMyA
— Tyrese Haliburton (@TyHaliburton22) August 10, 2024
Tyrese Haliburton is beloved by his coaches and teammates
Haliburton’s teammates and coaches have never said a bad word about him and had his back after The Athletic’s poll results came out. Pascal Siakam spoke out to defend his point guard, and Rick Carlisle had a fiery response.
“The other guys on the list were Jimmy Butler and Giannis,” Carlisle said. “I want to see the faces of the guys that voted those guys. I want to see the faces of those guys. This is a bulls— poll. Not everybody even answered in the poll…the whole thing is bulls—, and it’s really a shameful thing. Jimmy Butler would be a finalist for MVP if he had gotten to Golden State a month and a half earlier. And Giannis, are you kidding me?”
Tyrese Haliburton grades out as a top player statistically
Haliburton’s raw stats are impressive. He averaged 18.6 points and 9.2 assists this season. His advanced stats are even better.
Haliburton graded out as the ninth-best player in Estimated Plus-Minus. He was No. 8 in LEBRON. The adjusted plus-minus stats show how much impact he has on winning games.
Tyrese Haliburton is a winner
This is perhaps the biggest defense that Haliburton has. The Pacers were 19-37 when they traded for him in the middle of the 2021-22 campaign. They’ve gone 120-104 since and reached the Eastern Conference finals last season. He earned them the No. 4 seed this year.
The results speak for themselves. There were over 500 players in the league this season, and only 13 of them had some gripe against Haliburton. The rest knew what everyone else does. He’s earned every ounce of praise that’s been thrown his way.
