Rick Carlisle’s latest Tyrese Haliburton update came with a clear tone: the Pacers guard is moving in the right direction.
Speaking during Indiana’s Summer League opener, Carlisle said Haliburton has been back on the floor for a while and is pushing through his rehab work. The Pacers beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 99-93 to start their summer schedule, and Carlisle addressed Haliburton’s status along with several other topics.
"Ty's doing well. He's been playing 5-on-5 for a long time," Carlisle said.
"It's going to be a bit of a journey for him. But he's aggressively attacking the summer."
Haliburton missed the entire 2025-26 NBA season after tearing his Achilles in Game 7 of the NBA Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Indiana felt the absence immediately, finishing 19-63 without him.
The expectation now is that the Pacers will handle him carefully when the 2026-27 season begins. There may not be a formal minute restriction, but Indiana also can’t afford to rush him back into a heavy workload too quickly.
Before the injury, Haliburton was coming off a huge 2024-25 season that ended with Indiana’s run to the NBA Finals. He appeared in 73 games and averaged 18.6 points, 9.2 assists, 3.5 rebounds and 1.4 steals per game while shooting 47.3 percent from the field and 38.8 percent from beyond the arc.
Those numbers were a step down from the previous two seasons, but he was still operating as one of the league’s top point guards.
At 26, Haliburton still has plenty of runway ahead of him. Indiana has also continued building around him, with Ivica Zubac and Kelly Oubre Jr. among the new faces now in town.
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