NBA superstar LeBron James and Pacers All-Star Tyrese Haliburton covered a lot of topics in a 41-minute episode of “Mind The Game,” the high-minded basketball podcast. Here are some of the other more interesting insights:
>> Haliburton said the Pacers learned a lot from their loss to the Lakers in the inaugural In-Season Tournament Finals in 2023 and that some of the lessons learned informed the way the Pacers continued to build the team and even inspired their pursuit of All-Star forward Pascal Siakam. Indiana acquired Siakam from the Raptors a little over a month after that game.
Siakam has been the Pacers’ leading scorer since then, helping them to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2024 and their first NBA Finals trip in 25 years in 2025. Siakam has still been the Pacers’ leading scorer this season and is making an All-Star push with Haliburton out for the year with an Achilles tendon tear and the Pacers in last place in the Eastern Conference at 11-36.
“I think about that game often because we were playing so well until that point,” Haliburton said. “If we win that game, do we ever trade for Pascal? I don’t know.”
Haliburton remembered a specific play when he threw a pass that was intercepted by James, then got back on defense to foul him before he could shoot that gave him a sense of how the game was going to go.
“I still remember it like it was yesterday, man,” Haliburton said. “I came off the ball screen, I hadn’t turned the ball over in three games. I was rolling. I came off. You were the MIG (most important guy on defense). I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m fitting to hit this pocket.’ Then you ran through and stole it, and that was before the take foul, so I just grabbed you. You looked at me and I looked at you and I’m like, ‘Ah (expletive), we’re in trouble. This is about to be a long night.'”
Haliburton struggled as the Lakers blitzed pick-and-roll coverages to get the ball out of his hands. He still finished with 20 points and 11 assists in that game but no one else for the Pacers scored more than 15 points in a 123-109 loss. The Pacers shot just 37% from the floor and 24% (10 of 41) from 3-point range.
“I struggled that night and we didn’t have anybody else who really got us going that night,” Haliburton said. “I think that was eye-opening to our front office in that moment to think, ‘We need to get another guy.’ I feel like that game is the catalyst for getting a guy like Pascal. So it’s funny you think about that. I would’ve loved to win that game, but I think losing it allowed us to build on what we had.”
>> Part of the purpose of the “Mind The Game” podcast is to educate viewers and listeners on basketball’s finer points, so James asked Haliburton to explain why and how he became so good at the jump pass even though coaches tend not to teach it because it can be a dangerous move. Once a player goes up in the air with the ball, he can’t come down with it because that’s a traveling violation, so that can lead to players making bad passes for turnovers because they have to get rid of the ball.
Haliburton has had a lot of success with it, however, averaging 8.8 assists per game to just 2.1 turnovers per game for his career. He led the NBA in assist-to-turnover ratio in 2024-25 and at one point had five consecutive games with double-figure assists and exactly one turnover. Not all of those assists come from jump passes, but some do and they aren’t increasing his turnover rate.
“I blame people like you for why it’s that way,” Haliburton said. “Growing up I watched a lot of NBA basketball. That’s like the main thing I watched. I would see guys like you and, my dad loved Magic (Johnson) so we’d always watch old Magic highlights and stuff. So I saw them do that and I understood, ‘Oh, this is a way for me to pass the ball.’ And I was always a taller kid and as guys got taller as well, it was a way for me to always be seeing over the defense. I felt comfortable making that read in the air. I know coaches say they don’t want to teach it and it was kinda taboo in a sense, but for me, it was a way for me to hold the ball longer to make reads.”
>> James asked Haliburton how the Pacers created and honed their style of randomized action. Haliburton said the play style had its roots in the freestyling he and Buddy Hield did when they were traded together to the Pacers from the Kings in February of 2022.
“Me and Buddy didn’t know any of the plays,” Haliburton said. “… We played a lot of buddy ball. Me and Buddy were just, ‘Come set the blur screen. I’m gonna come off and if you don’t got a shot throw it back and then blur again and we’re gonna play off this.”
Much of the two months between the trade and the end of the season involved Haliburton and Hield passing back and forth to each other. In a game against the Timberwolves, then Minnesota forward Taurean Prince stood up from the bench to tell Haliburton “Hey, y’all know there’s other players on the team?” But Haliburton said he and Hield’s improvisation actually led to coach Rick Carlisle’s trust in him to run the offense.
“I felt like establishing that when we weren’t good allowed us to go into that following year and RC to pull me aside and just be like, ‘Hey man, I don’t want to call plays,'” Haliburton said. “‘I want you to dictate what we do more. I want to play more random. It’s harder to scout that way.’ We kinda ran with that.”
Dustin Dopirak covers the Pacers all season. Get more coverage on IndyStarTV and with the Pacers Insider newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Tyrese Haliburton on the Pacers’ trade for Pascal Siakam
