Tyrese Haliburton Played Four Games Back and Hurt the Hamstring He Has Hurt Three Times Before
Tyrese Haliburton has a mild strain in his left hamstring. He is week to week. He played four games.
Rick Carlisle gave the diagnosis to reporters Wednesday afternoon, after Haliburton met with team doctors, trainers, front office staff and an outside hamstring specialist the Pacers had consulted before. ESPN’s Shams Charania reported he will miss at least two weeks. Carlisle told reporters to ask him for an update in two weeks and said he does not think a return before then is realistic.
Those are two different claims, and the difference matters. Nobody has announced a return date. The Pacers have not issued a written statement at all. “He’ll be listed as week to week” is the whole of the official position.
This Is the Same Hamstring, Again
Here is the part that should worry Indiana more than the two weeks do.
Haliburton suffered a Grade 1 strain in his left hamstring in January 2024 and missed multiple games. He re-injured the same hamstring in the 2024 Eastern Conference Finals and missed multiple games. He had left hamstring tightness in January 2025 that knocked him out of a game against Cleveland and one more after it. Wednesday makes four separate incidents involving one leg.
It is the opposite leg from his repaired right Achilles, and no doctor has connected the two, so nobody should. The hamstring has a long enough history on its own.
He Was Playing Like the Player Indiana Had Been Waiting For
That is what makes this land so hard. Haliburton returned on Oct. 21 at New Orleans, 486 days after tearing his right Achilles five minutes into Game 7 of the 2025 Finals. He fought back tears and said, “It means a lot to be back out here.” Then he put up 23 points and 12 assists and the Pacers won by three.
Four games in, he was averaging 21.8 points, 9.5 assists and 4.5 rebounds in 33 minutes a night, shooting 51.6 percent from the floor and 37.0 percent from three. Three 20-point games. Two double-doubles. Indiana was 2-2 going into Wednesday night.
There was no injury play to point at. The soreness came out of a back-to-back on Oct. 25 and 26, and he played 35 minutes in Milwaukee on the second night with a heating pad on the hamstring. Afterward he said, “I’m alright. I’m a little beat up, but I’ll be fine.” The official league report filed Tuesday listed him as questionable with left hamstring tightness and soreness. The word strain did not arrive until Wednesday afternoon.
The Guard Room Was Already Empty
T.J. McConnell has not played a game this season because of a right hamstring strain of his own. Ben Sheppard is out with a torn meniscus. Johnny Furphy is out after ACL surgery. Andrew Nembhard was questionable with neck stiffness and got cleared Wednesday, which leaves him running the offense with Quenton Jackson behind him.
Jackson played 27 minutes in Milwaukee when Nembhard and McConnell were both unavailable. Pascal Siakam leads the team at 23.5 points a game and will have to carry more of this.
Indiana went 19-63 last season without Haliburton, the worst record in franchise history. Nobody is suggesting two weeks repeats that. But this roster has no margin, the schedule hands them Miami on Friday and then Brooklyn and Atlanta, and the player they spent 16 months waiting on is 26 years old, earning nearly $49 million this season, with a hamstring that keeps raising its hand.
The two weeks are survivable. The pattern is the part that should scare Indiana.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
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