'He was incredible tonight': Tyrese Haliburton scores 32 and just misses All-Star MVP

INDIANAPOLIS -- Once the first one fell, Tyrese Haliburton decided he was just going to keep shooting and keep moving back until he figured out his limit.

His first two 3-pointers in Sunday's All-Star Game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse were from the left corner, coming in at around 25 feet. Then he pulled up from 27 feet. Then he ran back into the left corner with a step-back on the run and drilled that one despite his momentum falling away form the bucket.

Then Haliburton got bolder and let fly from a step to the left of the NBA logo at half court and buried that one, starting 5 of 5 from 3 with 15 of the Eastern Conference's first 20 points before he saw the mother of all heat checks rim out.

"I was just going to keep shooting until I missed," Haliburton said. "Having fun playing basketball."

The certified face of the 2024 All-Star Game kept shooting and didn't miss much more beyond that, finishing an All-Star weekend in which he barely had time to breathe with a performance that warranted all of the attention that came his way. The host Pacers' lone All-Star and first All-Star starter since Paul George in 2016 scored 32 points on 11 of 15 shooting, including 10 of 14 from 3-point range to go with six assists -- and would have had seven if Damian Lillard had hit a 3 on his elbow pass -- and seven rebounds in the East's 211-186 win over the West. It might not have been the most spectacular offensive performance in an All-Star Game in which defense was once again optional, but it was the most efficient.

The East became the first team in NBA All-Star history to score 200 points in a game -- no team has ever scored more than 186 in a regular season game -- and they crossed that threshold on another 3-pointer by Haliburton, a pull-up from 29 feet. He immediately followed that with another pull-up from 28 feet and then his only 2-pointer of the night, a fast-break dunk (against indifferent defense) to bring the East's figure up to 205.

The performance almost earned Haliburton the MVP award, and many argued that it should have. Haliburton received five votes in the 12-vote panel that decided the MVP, but Bucks guard Damian Lillard received the other seven. Lillard scored 39 points on 14 of 26 shooting including 11 of 23 from 3-point range, but his multiple 3s from the half-court line were among the most spectacular plays of the event.

Some of his Eastern Conference teammates were hopeful that Haliburton would win the award with the event being in Indianapolis.

"Hali came out hot, and I was hoping he’d win the All-Star MVP," Celtics wing Jaylen Brown said. "He’s the hometown (guy), it would have been fitting. Hali can light it up, we all know that.”

Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell wanted to see him do it too and pushed him to hunt more shots to put up a big enough scoring figure to grab the award.

"I told him he should go for it," Mitchell said. "I told him he should have went for it to start the game. But he is coming back from the injury, so he tried to pace it, I guess. I told him to go ahead and go get it. He started off hot, Dame got going, too, and there was a lot of scoring today."

Haliburton was indeed cognizant of the fact that he is still coming off a strained left hamstring that forced him to miss 10 of the 11 games the Pacers played from Jan. 10-28. He returned on a minutes restriction, and even though that has since been significantly eased to the point that he played 34 minutes in each of the Pacers' last two games before the All-Star Break, he knew he had to remain careful to avoid a setback.

So he was simply pleased to get through the game without any negative impact, playing 27 minutes.

"I didn't know how many minutes I was going to play, didn't know how my leg would feel," Haliburton said. "I felt good today, even after the one-leg dunk. So that's positive for me. Obviously it wasn't high intensity at all. It feels good that I felt good, and hopefully I can continue that moving forward."

Haliburton's performance capped off a strong overall performance for the Pacers in All-Star weekend. Second-year guard Bennedict Mathurin led his team to a championship in the Rising Stars event on Friday night and was named MVP. Mathurin, Haliburton and center Myles Turner claimed the Skills Challenge title on Saturday night. Haliburton fell short in the 3-point contest, but on Sunday before the All-Star game, center Oscar Tshiebwe, a two-way player who splits time with the Pacers and the G League's Mad Ants, led his team to the title in the G League Up Next event.

"I think there's a lot of energy in the building, a lot of energy from Pacers fans, a lot for us to be excited about," Haliburton said. "You saw what Benn started off with Rising Stars MVP. Won the Skills Challenge yesterday. There's been a lot of love and excitement through not only our city but our organization as well. We just want to carry that momentum through the second half of the season and make a playoff push."

And now that the weekend in which Haliburton felt like "the prom king" is over, he returns to his mission of leading the Pacers back to the postseason for the first time since 2021, to a playoff series for the first time since 2020 and to a playoff series in which games will actually be played in Indianapolis instead of the COVID bubble for the first time since 2019.

The Pacers hobbled into the break with Haliburton's injury one of several ailments that kept them short of full strength, but they won their last game before the break and the time off will give them a week to return to health. They sit in sixth place in the Eastern Conference at 31-25. Though they have just a half-game lead on Orlando and Miami, a 4 1/2 game lead on ninth-place Chicago, a 6 1/2 game lead on 10th-place Atlanta and a nine-game lead on 11th-place Brooklyn, which puts them in relatively healthy position to get a play-in spot at the very least.

Haliburton's performance over the weekend gave both his peers and his elders even more reason to believe that he can take the Pacers somewhere special, this season and in years beyond. Reggie Miller, almost inarguably the greatest player in the Pacers' NBA history, said this week that he believes that Haliburton can lead the Pacers to a championship. Shaquille O'Neal and Charles Barkley gushed about how impressive they find him as a person and as a player.

"His teammates love him," Suns forward and surefire future Hall-of-Famer Kevin Durant said. "Fans love him. I'm excited to watch his career going forward because I know he's going to do some incredible things here in Indiana. But just for the game of basketball as a whole, you can tell he's one of those point guards that the next generation, kids in elementary school, middle school kids will be looking up to. It's cool he got his opportunity and got his franchise to kind of run on his own."

Said Bucks forward and two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo: "The future is bright for him and the future is bright for the city of (Indianapolis). I'm excited for him. He was incredible tonight."

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Tyrese Haliburton's 32 points leave him just short of All-Star MVP