Is Bucks-Pacers a rivalry? Oshkosh native Tyrese Haliburton says not yet
Indiana Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton spent so much time greeting, taking pictures with and signing autographs for an entire section of his fans at Fiserv Forum on New Year’s Day that not one, but two, security guards had to kick all of us out – very nicely, not at all aggressively – to close the court area.
That’s how much the 24-year-old from Oshkosh has maintained ties to Wisconsin and how much he wanted to connect with what looked to be about 100 (maybe 200) people who waited for him to come back out to the court after the game against the Milwaukee Bucks ended.
For a minute there it didn’t look like Haliburton was going have time to talk about his Pacers beating the Bucks – solidly – despite a triple-double by Giannis Antetokounmpo. But later, with his teammates all long gone, Haliburton did field a handful of questions.
The Pacers, led by Haliburton’s per-game average of 24.7 points and NBA-leading 12.7 assists, have been giving the Bucks fits this season, both in the win-loss column, as well as with clashing personalities.
More: Why were the Bucks upset with the Pacers after the game on Dec. 13? Hint: It wasn't about a ball.
Milwaukee-Indiana is shaping up to be a great modern rivalry, Haliburton’s respectful comments aside. Here are the highlights of what Haliburton told the media Monday night about his homecoming, and how this Bucks-Pacers matchup has evolved since he was traded to Indiana from Sacramento in February 2022.
The Bucks and Pacers have a rematch Wednesday night in Indianapolis.
Q. Were you more looking forward to this one after your last time here?
Haliburton: Sure. Come on, it is home for me. I mean, all the extra stuff is extra stuff, but it's home for me. I get to see my mom, my dad, my brothers, my nieces. Everybody's here. I've never won in this building, never won at home before. So it’s less about all the extra stuff. I mean, that's part of it. But just being at home – I had Culver's before the game. That's always nice.
Q. How many friends and family members were here?
Haliburton: Too many, too many. I can't even count all the people that were out there. I mean, that's the ones I saw after the game – not to include people that were just here to come watch me. It's always cool to see yellow zeroes (his jersey number) in the crowd. It means the world to me.
Q. But it was at least dozens?
Haliburton: At least dozens; probably hundreds. Who knows.
Q. The depth on the Pacers says what about the team? Pacers got 70 points from the bench.
Haliburton: Our depth is the best part of our team. We got a lot of guys who can contribute. Some nights, nights like tonight where we come out slow, our bench has to come in and kind of wake the game up. So that's the great part about our depth.
Q. You’ve won three out of four against Milwaukee; does that say anything or give you guys any sort of confidence going forward about your team?
Haliburton: We got confidence against anybody, it doesn't matter who it is. And obviously this is a division opponent. Really good team, team coming off championship a couple years ago and they got great, great players. We got confidence, no matter who it is.
Q. You had 11 assists. Was that from extra effort of making more ball movement? Or did you see open windows or certain lanes that were opening up?
Haliburton: I mean, just understanding where gaps are; we've seen these guys a lot this year. So understanding what my reads are going to be. They've switched it up, you know, they put Brook (Lopez) on four man more; and put Giannis on the bigs so they could switch the one-five pick and roll.
Q. When it comes to rivalries, though, do you feel this is an established rivalry? You're smirking a little bit, but I wouldn't think Indiana-Milwaukee necessarily as a rivalry … before this year. Now I think it's got to be.
Haliburton: It's a division opponent. So at the end of the day, it's just going to be highly, highly heated games. We beat them in the In-Season Tournament, and obviously they came out with a little more fight. You know, I think their words were, "We were not prepared for them physically." So, we've had to respond the right way today.
I don't know if it's a rivalry because to be honest with you, that's a team that's competed for a championship for multiple years; and we're on the up and up, but I mean, we haven't we haven't been there yet. So respect for them as a group. I don't think I can really call it a rivalry yet, but you know, we're going to compete no matter who it's against. We play these guys a lot during the year so we're ready when we see them.
Q. What about you individually, though, when it comes to rivalries? You could face one through five. Sometimes when you play somebody they bring the best out of you, but there's not like one guy on this team that you'd like to match up against, right? The Bucks in general?
Haliburton: Just the Bucks in general. I think they got a ton of great players. You know, when you play against other great players in the league – Dame, Giannis, K-Midd, Brook – all those guys are really good players. So when you play against good players, you got to be prepared to go.
Q. Beyond rivalry, you play them five times in two months. You've talked about the target on your back from that tournament; does all that add to it at all, those games being so congested?
Haliburton: I think that's the fun part about it. You know, we've seen these guys so much. There's no way around it; you got to go through it and thought we've done a good job of competing with these guys. I mean, obviously last game we still felt like, you know, if we could probably keep Giannis off the free throw line, to be better defensively, we would probably win that game. So you know, we just got to control what we can on a nightly basis and this is a game that everybody was prepared for. And everybody was ready for.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Pacers-Bucks rivalry? Tyrese Haliburton won't call it that yet
