Tyrese Haliburton Drops Strong Message Before Indiana Pacers’ Final Game

Haliburton’s comments come as Indiana finished second-to-last in the Eastern Conference standings, with only the Washington Wizards posting a worse record in the conference. The Pacers closed out their 2025-26 campaign with a 133-121 loss to the Detroit Pistons.

And while the season slipped away on the court, Tyrese Haliburton’s road to recovery gave fans the clearest reason to look ahead.

Tyrese Haliburton Recovery Updates After Achilles Injury

In December, in his first appearance as a player-contributor on Amazon Prime Video’s NBA Nightcap, Haliburton said he was approaching the six-month mark on his road to recovery and was doing everything outside of contact, intending to play one-on-one by the end of the month.

That progress picked up the following month as he told LeBron James on the Mind the Game podcast that he had begun playing full-court 4-on-4 games against team interns and some of the Pacers’ reserves, and that he was up 30 pounds since the final game of the 2025 season, with plans to carry some of that added muscle into the next year.

Having said that, the recovery hit a detour shortly after, in February, when Rick Carlisle confirmed that Haliburton had come down with shingles during the All-Star break, forcing him away from the team and slowing his rehab for nearly a month. Tyrese Haliburton did not return to the team until March 25.

Then, on April 8, he posted the milestone that Pacers fans had been waiting for, as Haliburton announced on X that he had played 5-on-5 for the first time since his Achilles surgery last June.

That being said, the 26-year-old is targeting a return to the floor by Opening Night of the 2026-27 season, and with a high draft pick incoming and the roster largely intact, Indiana’s rebuild is expected to be brief.