Tyrese Haliburton became NBA’s point guard of the future by mastering its past

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Tyrese Haliburton is melding the past and present of point guard play to emerge as a new kind of NBA superstar.

The fabled idea of the ‘true point guard’ has been under attack in today’s NBA. The traditional floor general as epitomized by the lineage of Isiah Thomas to John Stockton to Steve Nash to Chris Paul met its maker in the throes of the league’s three-point revolution, when an emphasis on oversized primary creators and switchable defenders rendered the “pure point” as more of a modern anomaly than an industry standard.

LeBron James and Luka Doncic look nothing like a point guard at first glance, but were such offensive supernovas that no one was taking the ball out of their hands. Nikola Jokic took the idea even farther, marking the first time the game’s best passer was also its heaviest player and best post scorer. As it happened, the role of the point guard had to shift based on the personnel around them, with point-of-attack defense and spot-up shooting becoming as essential as the careful facilitation that had historically defined the position.

Tyrese Haliburton was always going to be a fascinating test case for where the ‘pure’ point guard stood in today’s game. He was overlooked coming out of high school in Oshkosh, WI, unable to crack the top-150 of his national recruiting class, yet almost immediately emerged as an under-the-radar freshman to watch at Iowa State. The Cyclones had recently seen Monte Morris rewrite the college record books for assist-to-turnover ratio, and Haliburton was challenging his marks while also adding a new level of size and skill for the position.

Haliburton’s game looked totally unorthodox coming out fo the college: he was tall for the position at 6’5, but his skinny frame left him incapable of generating downhill force. He put nearly zero pressure on the rim as a lead ball handler, averaging only 1.2 free throw attempts per game in two years in ISU. His spot-up jumper was cash, but his awkward shooting form seemed to limit him on pull-ups. His numbers painted the picture of an all-around savant, but it was easy to be skeptical of his NBA translation: can a player who can’t get to the rim or punish a defense for going under screens really be a primary ball handler in the modern NBA?

Haliburton answered his biggest questions from the moment he took an NBA court after falling to the No. 12 pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, where he was selected by the Sacramento Kings. Paired with the speedy De’Aaron Fox in the backcourt, Haliburton needed to be less of an offensive engine and more of a connector, with quick perimeter passes and spot-up jumpers serving as the basis for a First-Team All-Rookie selection. It wasn’t until he was traded to the Indiana Pacers during his second season in a stunning blockbuster for Domantas Sabonis that the league really got to see the limits of his game.

Haliburton already had an All-Star appearance and a $260 million max contract as he entered his fourth pro season this year, but he was still something of a best kept secret among diehards. The Pacers had not yet qualified for the play-in tournament, let alone the playoffs, and they had only one national TV game on the schedule. In a league still run by the glamour markets, Indiana was as small-time as it gets. Perhaps it would have stayed this way for the foreseeable future had Haliburton not forced his way into the spotlight during the league’s inaugural in-season tournament.

The whole world got to see the actualized version of Haliburton on Monday night in the tournament’s quarterfinals. There were no other games on the schedule as the Pacers took on the mighty Boston Celtics. In the first TNT game of his career, all Haliburton did was stamp himself as not just one of the game’s best point guards, but one of its very best players, in Indiana’s 122-112 win:

The line speaks for itself: 26 points, 13 assists, 10 rebounds, and perhaps most notably, zero turnovers. As he took on the East’s top championship contender and the league’s second best defense, Haliburton showcased all the ways in which evaluators got him wrong. He was consistently able to bend the defense off the dribble to find open shooters. He ripped one pull-up three after the next, including a four-point play to start the late game run that would deliver Indiana the victory. He at once blended the “pure point guard” instincts of the position’s forefathers with the size and skill the modern game demands out of its primary creators.

To put it more simply, Tyrese Haliburton is magic, and the Pacers are blessed to follow his lead on their own ascent.

If the best way to judge a primary creator is on their team’s overall efficiency, there’s no denying Haliburton has moved into the land of legends to start this season.

At the moment, Haliburton has the Pacers with not just the No. 1 offense in the league this year, but with the highest team offensive rating of all-time. After decades spent carefully crafting and calling plays, head coach Rick Carlisle realized his team’s best chance came by sitting back and letting Haliburton define the terms of engagement. The result is a team that leads the league is pace yet somehow has the second lowest turnover rate. It’s a team that averages nearly 40 three-point attempts per game, yet one that leads the NBA in two-point field goal percentage by stressing defenses from the outside-in.

None of this is possible without Haliburton as the conductor. He maximizes every inch of the court and weaponizes the shot clock with a full throttle attack that roars not just after turnovers and defensive rebounds, but even made baskets. When Haliburton touches the ball, his team has no choice but to be off to the races.

At its worst, the traditional floor general is so calculated, so controlling that it can dribble the air out of the ball. Not Haliburton, whose lightning-quick decision making is becoming one of his greatest hallmarks.

Haliburton’s lack of bend and inability to generate force was supposed to be a handicap. Instead, he’s tightened his handle while leveraging the threat of both his shooting and passing to learn how to get wherever he wants. Jrue Holiday is one of the best defenders of his generation, but he couldn’t contain Hali even when picking him up full court.

Shooting range was never an issue for Haliburton. Getting the ball into an unconventional shooting pocket against longer and faster defenders seemed like it could be. Haliburton has become the type of shooter who doesn’t just punish defenses for going under, he obliterates them in isolation with a willingness to pull from far beyond the three-point line.

How did this man get drafted behind Killian Hayes, Patrick Williams, Isaac Okoro, Jalen Smith, and James Wiseman? It’s a swing-and-a-miss by the NBA, but it’s also a testament to Haliburton’s improvement and development. He’s gotten more flexible as a ball handler, more dynamic as a shooter, and stronger in his core and lower body. He’s developed such a mastery of classic point guard play that he can now break those rules and rewrite them in his own image. Jump passes are good now, and Tyrese Haliburton is great.

Through 17 games, Haliburton is averaging 26.9 points and 11.9 assists with a lowly turnover rate of 10.5 percent, numbers that have never been seen before in league history. The benchmarks get even more hallowed when you factor in that he’s nearly taking nine three-pointers per game and draining them at a 45 percent clip.

Why pick between a classic floor general and an oversized primary creator when you can have both? Haliburton is melding the league’s past and future into one blinding talent. The ‘pure’ point guard reigns again, and Pacers are just starting to show us how far that can take them.