Haliburton sets Pacers’ season assist record
INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton set the franchise’s season assist record on Friday night, setting up Aaron Nesmith for a 3-pointer with 4:48 to play that put them up 118-104 in a victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder. It was Haliburton’s 11th assist of the night and 714th of the season, breaking Mark Jackson’s mark set in 199798.
Haliburton leads the NBA with 11.0 assists per game.
It was an appropriate night for Haliburton to set the mark. He went into Friday’s game knowing he’d be guarded by one of the toughest perimeter defenders in the NBA in Luguentz Dort and that 1-5 switches would also leave him dealing with some of the longest arms in the league — those of 7-3 Thunder center Chet Holmgren. So Haliburton seemed have a sense early that he could make more of an impact by using his gravity to pass and set up others than to try to score.
And he was right. Haliburton took just two shots in the first half and missed them both but he dished out eight assists and some of those were gems, teeing up layups and easy 3-pointers. He had two more assists early in the second half before he finally scored on a 3-pointer with 4:32 to go in the third. He scored on another layup and then hit a fallaway 3 at the end of the third quarter to finish with eight points. But he kept focusing on moving the ball, which of course, was exactly what coach Rick Carlisle expected of his All-Star point guard.
“Tyrese Haliburton is defined by winning, not by scoring,” Carlisle said. “He’s defined by what a great teammate he is and how he helps his teammates win games. He was patient. He was disciplined. When opportunities presented themselves, he hit a couple of really big shots in the third quarter to give us some momentum. Then from there we were able to finish the game off. He should never be defined by whether or not he’s getting a certain number of points. He’s a guy who is a master at facilitating for his teammates.”
Haliburton himself was not that thrilled with his individual performance, particularly the slow start. He had just one assist in nine minutes and 44 seconds of action in the first quarter, missing his only shot, a 3-point attempt. But when he returned in the second quarter the second unit had given the Pacers the lead and he noticed more opportunities to get teammates easy looks, either at the rim or from 3-point range. He didn’t take a single field goal attempt in the second period but had seven assists, helping the Pacers shoot 13 of 20 from the field (65%) and 7 of 12 from 3-point range to post a 1.33 pointsper-possession efficiency figure for the period. He assisted on five of the seven 3-pointers and two buckets in the lane.
“I thought I came out non-aggressive,” Haliburton said. “Once I got the ball in my hands more in the second period — I thought we avoided pick-androll a little bit more than we usually do, and I felt like we could literally score every time we were in the pick-and-roll today. Once we did that, it kind of opened everything up offensively.”
Haliburton said he’s never really met Mark Jackson, but Carlisle was an assistant coach under Larry Bird in the 1997-98 season when Jackson set the mark. That wasn’t even Jackson’s best assist season, as he recorded 935 in a season in which he spent time with both the Nuggets and the Pacers, having been traded by Indiana to Denver in June and then back to Indiana in February.
“Mark was a great player,” Carlisle said. “Mark was top two or three in assists all time for a while. He was a real master and Tyrese has a lot of the same qualities. He has the vision, he knows his personnel. He has a great sense for timing, when to deliver the ball, how to deliver it. That record stood for a long time and Mark Jackson was that good of a player here.”
But of course it’s clear already that Haliburton is too. Carlisle said he expects Haliburton to shatter his own record next year if he’s completely healthy, as a strained hamstring cost him much of the month of January this season. Haliburton entered Friday’s game averaging 8.7 assists per game for his career, and 10.4 per game in two-plus seasons with the Pacers since he was acquired from Sacramento in a February, 2022 trade. He’s already less than 200 assists away from cracking the top 10 on the Pacers all-time career assist list. Reggie Miller’s career franchise record is 4,141, and on his current pace, Haliburton will need less than four more seasons to shatter that mark.