INDIANAPOLIS — Tyrese Haliburton will play in a win-or-stay-home Game 6 for Indiana on Thursday night.
“Tyrese will play…” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “He was strength tested at 5 p.m. and did very well. Went through walkthrough. There’s no set minutes limit. We will watch and monitor things very closely from the beginning of the game through the entirety of the game. We’ll go from there.”
Haliburton suffered a strained calf on a first-quarter drive in Game 5. While he went back to the locker room for a stretch, he came back out and still played 34 minutes on the night, but he scored just four points on 0-of-6 shooting. That is what Carlisle has to monitor: if Haliburton is out on the court but not helping the team — or is actively hurting it because he can’t move well enough — Carlisle will have to make a tough decision about how much to play the team’s offensive conductor.
Expect the Thunder to test him early on both ends of the court.
“I’ll say it again, he’s a great player,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said of Haliburton. “If there’s one thing we know, you don’t underestimate great players. In this situation, we’re expecting his best punch. Indiana is a great team. We’re expecting their best punch. I have no doubt he’s dealing with stuff, but we’re expecting him to come out and play like a great player would play. We have to prepare for that.”
Haliburton is averaging 15 points, 7.2 assists and 6.2 rebounds a game through these Finals, but is shooting 29.4% from 3. The Pacers are 12-3 in these playoffs in games Haliburton has scored 20+ points, which includes a Game 3 victory in the Finals in which he scored 22 points.
