When Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton hears himself called “the face of the franchise” he still chuckles. But for the Pacers, that’s how they see their young floor leader.
“We’re gonna build our team around him,” Pacers GM Chad Buchanan told Basketball News. “We see him as hopefully being the next Reggie Miller. We had a Reggie Miller mural painted on a building in downtown Indianapolis, and I think our dream is that one day Tyrese will have (his own) up somewhere in downtown Indianapolis.”
Haliburton said he cried for nearly an hour when he was told about the trade sending him to Indiana from the Sacramento Kings. Then he connected with Pacers leadership who told him they planned to build the team around him, which helped him start to move forward.
Haliburton also said hearing from his peers around the NBA that they think the Kings made a mistake helped him move on from being traded. Haliburton added that he now feels at home, as he’s a “Midwest kid”, and the Pacers say their new star is “meshing together perfectly” with the Indiana community.