Haliburton talks Achilles injury: ‘I’ll be great again’

There is never a right time to get hurt, at most there is the worst possible time. Tyrese Haliburton ruptured his Achilles tendon during game 7 of the last NBA Finals with his Pacers against OKC, which they then lost. Who knows how it would have gone. “I think about the injury every time I blink,” the point guard said in a long interview with The Athletic. “I don’t know if I’ll ever stop thinking about it, but you have to understand that at some point you have to move on.”

loneliness

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Then comes loneliness. An injury, especially one as serious as Haliburton’s, completely changes an athlete’s patterns. First you are in a group, you train with your mates, you experience the passion of the sport you love, the adrenaline, the competition. All of this suddenly disappears. “After a while everything became sad, because I just wanted to do what I normally do and I couldn’t,” he explained to The Athletic. “I’m not saying I was stuck in Indiana, but I was here doing rehab, in the gym by myself, with no one else in there.” Re-education, especially at the beginning, is long, repetitive, solitary, there is progress but it’s not like raising your hand and making a basket, it’s not always linear, in fact it’s often slow. It’s a physical effort, but also an emotional one. And, especially due to the rupture of the Achilles tendon, there is the certainty that it will be long (even a year), but not the guarantee of being able to return there, at that level, to play in the Finals, in the case of Haliburton. So what remains is dedication, trust and commitment. “I just have to understand that there were a lot of people who missed the Finals and had to work to get back there. And sometimes you don’t get back there. That’s the way it goes. I understand how hard I’ll have to work to get back there, and I take that into account. It was tough: there were a lot of good days and a lot of bad days, and I struggled a little to deal with it.”

become great again

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Kevin Durant has his own story, and he’s back, strong. Haliburton says he heard it often, as did other athletes who had experienced the same injury as him: they understand the anxiety, the fatigue. Then, inevitably, a space opens up, which Haliburton has learned to fill in recent months: he has been a commentator on TV for the NBA, a content creator, a DJ, a videomaker, and has collaborated more with Puma, his sponsor. Now he’s back in the gym with his teammates, albeit to do his differentiated work and physiotherapy: “There are days when time seems to fly, days when it never passes, but I’m happy with my progress, so is the organization. I took this path head on. I believe that in the NBA you need unshakable confidence to do something great: I want to be one and I know what it takes to get there, I don’t think twice.”

season

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The Pacers’ season is disappointing (9 wins, 32 losses), but Haliburton has resumed his role as a leader among his people. The support of friends, family, medical staff is the starting point and a great lesson: “What I have learned in the last 12 months, perhaps even something more, is it takes a village (you can’t do it alone) in life and that it’s okay to not be okay. I’m excited about the path it will take to get back to the top, and I believe this will make everything even more beautiful. That’s what I think about more than anything.”