Team: Indiana Pacers · PG/SG · Age 26 · Base role: lead creator and 32-minute starter
Projection card
| GP | MPG | 3PM | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | FG% | FT% | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 66 | 32.0 | 2.6 | 18.4 | 3.5 | 9.1 | 1.3 | 0.5 | .472 | .854 | 1.9 |
Nine-category: top 12-28 per game and top 25-50 in totals; assists, threes, steals and elite turnover control are the wins. Points: top 20-35 in common settings, with scoring-system sensitivity because efficiency and low turnovers are often underpaid. Dynasty: top 10-20; age 26 preserves the franchise horizon, while the repaired right Achilles lowers liquidity versus similarly productive healthy guards.
Why the line looks like this
Haliburton missed all of 2025-26 after rupturing his right Achilles in Game 7 of the 2025 Finals. He resumed 5-on-5 in April and a current NBA team surface said he no longer appeared restricted, but that is not the same as an official games or back-to-back plan. His last full baseline—18.6 points, 9.2 assists, 3.0 threes, 1.4 steals and 1.6 turnovers in 2024-25—supports the rate projection; 66 games and 32 minutes carry the uncertainty. Pacers return feature · NBA team surface · NBA Fantasy Focus baseline
Public prices are aggressive: SI ranked him fifth, Hashtag's July 18 crowd ranked him 10th, and Hashtag dynasty ranked him 13th. None publishes a transparent post-Achilles GP/MPG assumption, so those are market anchors rather than projection inputs. SI early top 50 · Hashtag crowd · Hashtag dynasty
Redraft, dynasty, and scenarios
- Redraft: buy in the late second round; accept late-first cost only after unrestricted camp and preseason minutes. Punt points or blocks magnify his efficiency profile.
- Dynasty: hold unless a manager pays healthy top-eight value. The cleanest buy window is from a contender that cannot absorb early maintenance.
- Floor: 56-60 games near 30 minutes, fewer rim attempts and roughly 16 points/8 assists; still top-40 per game but a totals miss.
- Ceiling: 70-72 games, 33 minutes, 20 points and 10 assists with his old turnover rate; top-eight 9-cat value.
Confidence
| Roster | Minutes | Rates | Availability |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | Medium | Medium-high | Medium-low |
The reversal signals are an official restriction, skipped preseason games or a cap below 28 minutes; consecutive unrestricted 32-minute preseason appearances would move the projection upward.
Career record
Pre-NBA: Iowa State, two seasons in the Big 12. As a freshman in 2018-19 he played 35 games at 6.8 points, 3.6 assists and 1.5 steals, shooting .515 from the field and .434 from three — low usage, absurd efficiency, which is the whole scouting story. As a sophomore in 2019-20 he jumped to 15.2 points, 6.5 rebounds, 6.5 assists, 2.5 steals and 2.4 made threes in 36.7 minutes on .504/.419/.822, and made second-team All-Big 12. That season ended early: he fractured his left wrist on February 8, 2020 against Kansas State and played only 22 games. Two years of .43-plus and .42 three-point shooting on real volume, with assist-to-turnover control already in place, is the direct ancestor of the NBA profile. Draft: 2020, first round, 12th overall, Sacramento Kings; not traded on draft night. He was dealt to Indiana in February 2022 in the Domantas Sabonis trade.
| Season | Age | Team | GP | MPG | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | 3PM | FG% | FT% | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | 20 | SAC | 58 | 30.1 | 13.0 | 3.0 | 5.3 | 1.3 | 0.5 | 2.1 | .472 | .857 | 1.6 |
| 2021-22 | 21 | SAC | 51 | 34.5 | 14.3 | 3.9 | 7.4 | 1.7 | 0.7 | 2.0 | .457 | .837 | 2.3 |
| 2021-22 | 21 | IND | 26 | 36.1 | 17.5 | 4.3 | 9.6 | 1.8 | 0.6 | 2.2 | .502 | .849 | 3.2 |
| 2022-23 | 22 | IND | 56 | 33.6 | 20.7 | 3.7 | 10.4 | 1.6 | 0.4 | 2.9 | .490 | .871 | 2.5 |
| 2023-24 | 23 | IND | 69 | 32.2 | 20.1 | 3.9 | 10.9 | 1.2 | 0.7 | 2.8 | .477 | .855 | 2.3 |
| 2024-25 | 24 | IND | 73 | 33.6 | 18.6 | 3.5 | 9.2 | 1.4 | 0.7 | 3.0 | .473 | .851 | 1.6 |
| 2025-26 | 25 | IND | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | 333 | 33.0 | 17.5 | 3.7 | 8.8 | 1.5 | 0.6 | 2.6 | .477 | .855 | 2.1 |
The 2021-22 season is split above at the February 2022 trade: 51 games in Sacramento, 26 in Indiana, and the split is the point — his production changed shape immediately on arrival, from 7.4 assists to 9.6 and from .457 to .502 from the field in a larger role. There is no 2025-26 row because he did not appear in a game; Indiana announced on July 7, 2025 that he would miss the entire season. The career line above therefore covers five played seasons, not six.
Fantasy history: Season-end 9-category ranks are not verifiable from the sources reachable here, so I will not attach numbers to individual seasons. The category shape is legible from the table without them. 2020-21 was already useful — 2.1 threes and .857 from the line on a rookie. The step to fantasy stardom came with the Indiana trade and landed fully in 2022-23 and 2023-24, when he paired 10.4-10.9 assists with 2.8-2.9 threes, .855-.871 free-throw shooting and mid-.470s to .490 field-goal percentage. That is a first-round category profile with only blocks missing. 2024-25 looks like a step back on the scoring and assist lines but was arguably his most category-efficient season: 1.6 turnovers alongside 9.2 assists is a genuinely rare combination and worth more in 9-cat than the 1.7 points he gave back. Points-league value has always run materially behind the category value — he does not score enough, does not rebound, and does not block shots, and points formats give no credit for the .855 free-throw percentage or the turnover economy that make him valuable in categories. 2025-26 has no fantasy value of any kind; he was unrostered.
Durability: 58, 51 plus 26 (77 total), 56, 69, 73, 0. Before the Achilles he was trending the right way, from 58 games as a rookie to 69 and then a career-high 73 in 2024-25. Then he tore his right Achilles tendon in Game 7 of the 2025 Finals against Oklahoma City, roughly five minutes into the first quarter, confirmed the next day. Indiana ruled him out for all of 2025-26 in July 2025 rather than leaving a return window open — Kevin Pritchard framed it as refusing to risk a further injury — and the team went 19-63 without him. The rehab had one complication worth carrying into 2026-27: he contracted shingles around the February 2026 All-Star break and did not rejoin the team until March 25, which he has said cost him rehab time. He returned to 5-on-5 on April 8, 2026, about ten months post-injury. Note the earlier wrist fracture at Iowa State is unrelated and carries no forward signal.
Trajectory: The pre-injury arc is one clean role-driven leap and then a quiet refinement. The leap was the February 2022 trade, not a skill jump — Sacramento used him off the ball next to De'Aaron Fox, Indiana handed him the offense, and his assists went 7.4 to 9.6 within the same season at the same age. 2022-23 and 2023-24 were the mature version of that, and 2023-24's 10.9 assists is the peak playmaking season. What happened in 2024-25 is easy to misread as decline: per-36 scoring fell from 22.5 to 19.9 and assists dropped to 9.2, but turnovers fell from 2.3 to 1.6 in the same year, which reads as a deliberate shift toward lower-risk possessions rather than lost ability, and the three-point volume actually hit a career high at 3.0. The honest position on 2026-27 is that the aging curve is irrelevant here — he turns 27 during the season and would normally be squarely in his prime — and the entire projection question is the Achilles. Achilles returns at this age have generally cost explosion and first-step burst rather than shooting or passing, which is the best possible version of that injury for this specific player, since his value is concentrated in threes, assists and turnover control rather than rim pressure. The two things to actually watch are the rim-attempt rate, which is where a diminished Achilles shows up first and which feeds the .473 field-goal percentage, and whether Indiana caps minutes or back-to-backs — a healthy rate profile across only 55 games is a very different asset than the same rates across 70.
Career sources: ESPN career stats · Wikipedia — Tyrese Haliburton · Sports-Reference college stats · Forbes — shingles altered Achilles rehab · SI — Haliburton returns to 5-on-5
Open questions
- Will Indiana rest Haliburton on back-to-backs even if he opens camp without a formal cap?
- Does Zubac's interior role reduce Haliburton's rim volume or create enough pick-and-roll efficiency to offset it?