Tyrese Haliburton’s origin story: How Pacers star went from skinny freshman at Iowa State to NBA Finals

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Here’s a previously unbelievable sentence that became increasingly believable in the past 18 months: The Indiana Pacers will play in the NBA Finals for just the second time ever — and Tyrese Haliburton is the biggest reason why. 

Though Pacers teammate Pascal Siakam surprisingly won the Eastern Conference MVP award, Haliburton was responsible for the most memorable performances and moments against the Knicks. His iconic shot (and insta-meme reaction) in Game 1 will be included in NBA playoff highlight hype packages for the next generation. Then there’s Haliburton’s Game 4 ECF masterpiece: 32 points, 15 assists, 12 rebounds, four steals and zero turnovers.

Haliburton is the only player to ever log a stat line that gaudy in NBA history. And to do it in an Eastern Conference final against a better-seeded team? Legendary performance.

Not bad for a guy who once stressed about being forced to sit out a year at Iowa State.

While Haliburton showed glimpses of being really good at ISU from 2018-20, he was obviously not remotely projected to be what he’s become (a top-15 NBA player). Haliburton’s averaging 18.8 points, 9.8 assists, 5.7 rebounds in the 2025 playoffs — all improvements on his 2024-25 season averages. 

Ever since Haliburton’s emergence in the early portions of the 2023-24 season, when unsuspecting Indiana made a run to the In-Season Tournament championship game against the Lakers, his star-rise was viewed as a stunner. And on some level, it definitely has been. But college hoops ball-knowers will remember the skinny scorer as an efficiency monster in his two seasons at Iowa State. Haliburton’s taken what he did as a Cyclone and spun it into a mutant superpower as a pro. 

In 2016, Neill Berry, then an assistant at Iowa State, spotted a wiggly, rawboned kid with effortless glide at an Atlanta-based grassroots tournament. It was the summer going into Haliburton’s junior year of high school. It was also Berry’s first year on the road at Iowa State. 

“Tiny,” Berry told CBS Sports about how he remembers first seeing Haliburton. “From a physicality standpoint. … Back then it was an even lower (shot) release but he would just bomb them in.”

At that time, Northern Iowa was way ahead of everyone else in Haliburton’s recruitment. Eventually, Cyclones head coach Steve Prohm went to watch. Two minutes into the game, he texted Berry. 

We gotta have him.

“He was joking with the ref, playing with pace, could really shoot,” Prohm told CBS Sports. “I laugh all the time, you hear all these NBA scouts and people talking about, man, could he get his shot off? He shot 40% or better from 3 two years in a row in the best league in the country.” 

Haliburton finished high school as a three-star prospect ranked 177th nationally. He believed in Prohm because Deonte Burton (also from Wisconsin) came from the same pipeline. He also saw guys like Monte Morris thrive at ISU, in addition to Prohm putting Isaiah Canaan and Cam Payne into the NBA from Murray State. Iowa State ultimately beat out UNI, Nebraska and Cincinnati for Haliburton.

“You never know, projecting what a player’s going to become, but you could tell he was going to bring an incredible personality to our program,” Berry said.

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Haliburton also had a connection with another incoming ISU freshman in 2018: Talen Horton-Tucker, who’s been in the NBA for six seasons. Their journey dates back more than 15 years. 

“We’ve known each other since the fourth grade,” Horton-Tucker told CBS Sports. “We always grew up playing against each other. It’s funny people see the way he plays now, the way his shot is. It’s the same since I first met him, the first day.”

The first time they played each other was in an AAU championship game. Horton-Tucker remembers beating Haliburton’s team by nearly 30. A few years later, Haliburton got revenge with a blowout win over Horton-Tucker’s squad.

Talk to just about anyone who knew Haliburton as a scrawny teenager and they’ll tell you the same thing Horton-Tucker, Prohm and Berry told me: He is pretty much the same person now as he was then (in a good way). Haliburton carries an infectious temperament; it’s what’s empowered him to be a leader for the Pacers. Go back 10 years ago and you’d still see someone who was an affable alpha. 

Seemingly everyone in his Oshkosh, Wisconsin community knew little Hali in middle school and high school. He lived a couple blocks from school and his single-story house was the one where all the kids would pile into after schooldays. 

“To play that position you have to have great people skills, have to be selfless, and you have to have personality,” Prohm told me last week. “Magic (Johnson) had personality. He’s got personality and that’s what throws him over the top. He can win over any room that he walks into because of his charisma and character. When you shake hands with him after the games today, it’s the same person you talked to seven, eight, nine years ago.” 

Haliburton arrived at Iowa State’s campus in the summer of 2018 weighing less than 150 pounds on a 6-foot-4 frame. A forgotten story from his arrival, and one that’s laughable in retrospect: Haliburton worried that summer that he might be redshirted and forced to sit a year. 

“When we first got to school he was a little sick, so he missed a few workouts and was behind the 8-ball,” Horton-Tucker said. “When he got better, you could see it early on with him being the true point guard he is, that he was destined for success.” 

Still, Haliburton asked multiple times for assurances he would get a chance to play, just so he could prove himself against the veterans. 

“It goes to show you where his humility level was,” Berry said. “Steve could tell early on how good he was.” 

In his first game of Haliburton’s freshman year, ISU sophomore guard Lindell Wigginton hurt his foot. So Haliburton found himself on the floor a lot more than anticipated — 29 minutes — and his intuition was obvious.

“Once that game happened, it’s one of those things where you realize he’s never leaving the lineup after,” Horton-Tucker said.

Haliburton was immediately inserted into the starting lineup; Prohm told me it felt like a no-brainer even then. After that second game, a win vs. Missouri, Prohm was stunned to realize: Haliburton had just played 40 minutes. He never left the starting lineup after that. That team would go on to get a 6-seed in the NCAA Tournament.

“He gives you a calmness on the floor by the way he plays and by the way he can process the game,” Prohm said.

Early on in that freshman year, as scouts came to get closer looks on Horton-Tucker and teammate Marial Shayok, one Western Conference executive was lingering in the gym near the end of practice. Prohm asked if he needed anything.

“You know who your best player is?” the exec asked Prohm. “Haliburton’s going to be your highest draft pick.” 

“What makes you say that?” Prohm asked. 

“The way he lets you coach him, the way he listens to the older guys, the way he catches on to things and how he is on the floor. I’d take him right now.”

This was more than a year before Haliburton would be taken in the lottery by the Sacramento Kings. At the end of that freshman season, ISU was upset in the first round of the NCAA Tournament by Ohio State. Haliburton went over to Horton-Tucker in the locker room and asked him to come back for his sophomore season. In that moment, Horton-Tucker expected that to be his course, but he wound up having a strong enough pre-draft process that he went one-and-done. 

It wasn’t easy for Horton-Tucker to leave. Haliburton was the most reliable teammate he had. They’d pile into his Chevy for diner runs, darts over to the practice facility, midday lunches, you name it. 

“I can say it because I’ve been around him off the court, too, he’s a team player on and off the court,” Horton-Tucker said. “When he was a freshman, he was the only one with the car. We had to get anywhere, he was the guy we could count on. … To have those equalities on top of the basketball skills, I pretty much knew from that time on he’d make it.”

With Horton-Tucker gone for the 2019-20 season, Haliburton went from being a pass-pass-pass point guard as a freshman to being asked to score much more in Year 2. The most absurd detail about Haliburton’s college career: Per Prohm, he didn’t play one possession at point guard as a sophomore. Yet he still logged 3.6 assists per game. A wrist injury sidelined him in the back half of that second season. Iowa State suffered because of it and didn’t make the NCAAs. It speaks to Haliburton’s numbers, reputation and pre-draft process that he still wound up being selected 12th overall by the Kings.

Haliburton played 57 games in two seasons at ISU. His traditional numbers were ordinary-looking (10.1 ppg, 4.7 apg, 4.4 rpg) but his player efficiency rating was high for a guard (20.3) and he shot 42.6% from 3-point range, 50.9% overall. In advanced metrics, he was conspicuously special. The data suggested a clever player who was especially valuable because he had length, didn’t force bad shots and seldom fouled. If anything, he was underused. As a freshman, Haliburton posted an outrageous 136.8 offensive rating — the highest of any first-year player in KenPom history, going back two decades in that data set.

Still, that suggests a player who could connect and stick in the NBA. Haliburton’s blown past all expectations. Why has he hit so big? What was there at Iowa State that’s been enhanced by NBA schemes?

“Basketball IQ, basketball IQ, basketball IQ. He’s brilliant,” Prohm said. 

Returning to the Midwest has also helped. Indiana is a natural place for Haliburton to call home. The fans flock to him and he enjoys giving back to that community. Haliburton manifests success. It’s just always been a part of his identity. He won a state championship in high school, was an immediate click at Iowa State, and now we’ve seen him elevate to top-tier NBA point guard, leapfrogging Jalen Brunson in the process of getting the Pacers past the Knicks.

Indiana changed its franchise so much for the better when it traded for Haliburton in 2022. Now it’s four wins away from historical achievement. This doesn’t happen if Haliburton isn’t wired to be the ideal point guard for Rick Carlisle’s system.

“Amazing smile, amazing spirit and an ability to connect people,” Prohm said. “I always said he could be the governor of Wisconsin if he wanted — and an NBA All-Star.”

And sure enough, a Hall-of-Famer if he keeps this up in the years to come.

This feature was modified and updated from December 2023 piece about Tyrese Haliburton in Matt Norlander’s college basketball Court Report. 

This news was originally published on this post .

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