This year, Tyrese Haliburton, a cornerstone of the Pacers’ present and future, was not moved at the trade deadline.
Probably nothing like that will happen again in the near future.
But when the Kings traded them to the Pacers in a pre-deadline blockbuster two years ago, ESPN’s NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski said Haliburton and He appeared strange on the phone with his agent.
Haliburton had been informed earlier in the day that he might be traded and had informed his girlfriend of the possibility, but his agent later revealed that the Kings did not return his calls and were not involved in the deal. The opposing team is unknown.
“And I heard Woj’s voice, ‘I think this is Indiana.'” Halliburton I remembered this while appearing on “The Woj Pod” The video was recorded live in Indianapolis prior to NBA All-Star Weekend. “I was like, ‘What? How’s Woj’s phone going? I think this is a call with my agent.’
Before that, Haliburton thought the 76ers would likely be a potential destination in a deal that also included then-Philadelphia star Ben Simmons.
But Haliburton wasn’t feeling too sure until Wojnarowski thought it might be the Pacers. That’s because his agent told him the Kings were “acting weird” and “didn’t respond to our calls.”
“Don’t worry,” Halliburton told his girlfriend. Even he didn’t have much concrete information about possible scenarios.
“We’ll figure it out,” Halliburton recalled telling his girlfriend that day. “If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Just be professional, let’s move on.”
Shortly after hearing Wojnarowski’s call, the Kings traded Haliburton, Buddy Hield, and Tristan Thompson to the Pacers for Domantas Sabonis, Justin Holiday, Jeremy Lamb, and a second-round pick. did.
“This just shows that this guy is almost a mystical figure,” Haliburton, a first-round pick of the Kings in 2020, said of Wojnarowski. “You don’t know where he is. He’s everywhere. He’s everywhere.”
Last year, in his first full season with the Pacers, Haliburton made his All-Star Game debut and averaged 20.7 points and 10.4 assists per game.
Signed a five-year contract extension worth up to $260 million in July, Haliburton averaged 21.8 points and a league-leading 11.7 assists per game through 43 games in the 2023-24 season.
Haliburton helped the Pacers, who held the No. 6 seed in the Eastern Conference at the All-Star break, advance to the championship game of the NBA’s first in-season tournament, with 15 assists and zero against the Bucks on the 15th. He showed off his turnovers. The semifinal helped extend Indiana’s unexpected run.
