Tyrese Haliburton is Finally Back in the Pacers Starting Lineup, and the Offense is About to Get Weird Again
Underdog NBA reported the lineup alert on X, confirming Haliburton's active status.
Seeing Tyrese Haliburton’s name in a starting lineup tweet feels like finding a $100 bill in a winter coat you haven’t worn in two years.
The Indiana Pacers are officially rolling out Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith, Pascal Siakam, and Ivica Zubac for Sunday’s matchup against the Brooklyn Nets.
For anyone who blocked out the trauma, Haliburton tore his right Achilles tendon during Game 7 of the NBA Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder. That brutal break cost him the entire 2025-26 campaign. Now, the franchise engine is finally off the injury report and back to running the floor.
Indiana is already shuffling the deck after getting smoked 121-105 by the Dallas Mavericks on Friday. Nesmith gets the nod over Jarace Walker this time around, slotting in next to Siakam and Zubac to give the Pacers a slightly different look.
From a betting perspective, this completely scrambles the board. You cannot just plug a healthy Haliburton back into a spreadsheet without blowing up the assist props and total points projections. The geometry of the entire offense changes when he has the ball.
The real question is how much leash he gets in his first real action back. Achilles recoveries are not exactly a straight line, so expect the Pacers to monitor his workload closely as he tests the structural integrity of that repaired tendon.
Sunday night in Brooklyn is step one. We are about to find out if the most entertaining offense in basketball is ready to pick up where it left off, or if the rust is going to take a minute to knock off.