Indiana Pacers fans have had a tough go of it in the NBA Eastern Conference Finals against the Boston Celtics. Not only did the team get swept in four games, Pacers All-Star Tyrese Haliburton missed games 3 and 4 in the series. What happened to him?
The NBA playoffs are difficult enough for a team, but to suffer two losses in a row and then lose your star player only exacerbates that issue. How did it go down? In the third quarter of game 2, Halliburton was in a defensive position guarding the Celtics small forward Jayson Tatum.
Tatum switched directions before a pass to Derrick White, and as Halliburton tried to keep up and also switch his orientation he hurt his hamstring. You can see the exact moment it happened and it looks really painful. Halliburton grimaces and you can tell he can’t even put pressure on it.
Hamstring injuries are divided into three grades depending on the severity of the damage to either the hamstring muscle or the tendon. A Grade 1 strain makes it difficult to move the leg, but strength is not affected. An injury like that can heal in a few days. A Grade 2 injury is a partial tear of the hamstring muscle. Strength in the leg is affected and it can take months to heal. Grade 3 is a complete tear. This takes the longest to heal and might even require surgery.
Obviously, the Pacers needed Haliburton in Game 4 but that just wasn’t meant to be. Now he can heal in the offseason hopefully. The worst part is that the hamstring issue is not new to the Pacers or Haliburton. He injured his hamstring back in January when playing (the irony!) the Celtics as well. He was forced to miss 10 games of the regular season, and when he would play it would only be for the league-required minimum of 20 minutes to qualify for All-NBA team eligibility.
There was a moment before Game 4 when the speculation of whether he would return or not was at an all-time high. Adrian Wojnarowski from ESPN reported before the game started that Haliburton “has not yet been ruled out” and that the star player “wanted to try to figure out a way to play in this series, even with that hamstring soreness/stain. But the team, especially Rick Carlisle, their front office, they want to err on the side of caution with him.” There’s always next year.
