Last summer, Tyrese Haliburton arrived at the photo taken at the Las Vegas casino, holding a pair of silver cowboy boots and resentment.

Before the Indiana Pacers’ guards put on denim and magazine cameras, he was shocked by everything he was grateful for: playing in a row at the league’s All-Star Game, the contract pays an average of about $52 million a year and invites him to play for the United States at the Paris Olympics.

What does Halliburton seem to be especially "Everyone thinks my success in the first half of last season was a kind of flush, and it's a totally other criticism," he said.

For a player who cuts from his teenage travel squad to the NBA All-Star in less than a decade, it can also be like being given a gift in the light of collecting.

“I’m at my best,” Halliburton told me, “when people talk about me.”

A year later, it's still right that the NBA is learning.

Haliburton has written a vengeance journey that has landed Indiana in the Eastern Conference finals for the second straight season since Haliburton was voted anonymously by his peers in April. The Pacers are now four-game victory after they debuted in the NBA Finals for their first time in 25 years.

Haliburton scored 31 points in the series win in the second quarter of Game 5 against Cleveland on Tuesday, beating the highest seed of the Eastern Conference, no less than Lebron James quoted and refuted the overrated label.

Halliburton seemed to like the last laugh. Hearing the ode to “overrated” in Milwaukee in the first round series growing up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, he won the series by driving Giannis Antetokounmpo, one of the NBA’s toughest guards with a second basket left in overtime. He celebrated the highlight on X.

Of the 90 most voted in the track and field poll, 14.4% chose Halliburton, or about 13 players overall in the 450 league. Haliburton was significantly slower this season when he struggled to play hard due to injury. Still, the poll was met with critical criticism on the podcast of Hall of Fame point guard Tim Hardaway Sr., who said Haliburton “thinks that he is all.”

The emotions of active and retired players, although clear, are not universal. But they are both Haliburton, who coaches Haliburton on the AAU team in Milwaukee and still maintains close relationships with the defender, Bryan Johnnikin said. It’s no surprise that he watched Halliburton’s heroic spirit help Indiana beat Milwaukee and then beat Cleveland.

"I'm not personally because once I know they call him overrated or say he doesn't belong, it really motivated him," John King said.

Johnnikin met a defender at Haliburton at the age of 14 and was injured after learning that his former AAU team wasn't keen on his return.

He said it was John King’s role as Halliburton’s new coach to understand what prompted the point guard. The journey of Wisconsin’s “Mr. Basketball” honors awarded to the state’s top high school student. So, it’s also true of coming to Iowa State as a relatively low recruit, partly because of his low jump shot rate and partly because of his low jump shot rate.

What these assessments might miss is Haliburton’s ability to think about problems, John King said. Indiana knows that the pace of the game will usually drop from the regular season to the playoffs, so it runs the opposite at the third fast pace of the playoffs.

"I promise you that if you put everyone in the playoffs in the classroom, he will be the smartest person."

Halliburton averaged 17.5 points, 9.3 assists and 5.5 rebounds in the playoffs, where the Pacers had better 17 points per 100 possessions as Halliburton sat on the court with him on the court. Teammates without Indiana have higher on/off levels.

"Harry, that boy made a lot of people look crazy about the overrated S ---" former NBA player Dorell Wright said this week's podcast with Dwyane Wade. “We need to recalculate.”

"His game doesn't look like you expected, right?" Wade said. “He has an unorthodox form…he won’t be in the league’s top ten in scoring, but he will still dominate the game.”

In NBA superstar Haliburton, he runs a YouTube channel where he plays video games against his brothers and prefers the mid-sized Indianapolis over the league's shiny big city market with a particularly calm personality. However, as a big fan of childhood, he quickly played the evil role of “heels”.

In addition to his breakthrough NBA season and winning Olympic gold medals in 2024, one of Halliburton’s personal highlights last year was written into a short series during WWE SmackDown, where he and New York Knicks Knicks State guard Jalen Brunson stared at each other. (In real life, two are friends.)

These playoffs feel like a long and long gaze with the rest of the league. Haliburton won the game's three-pointer after his tandem victory against Milwaukee, and won another incredible comeback in Game 2. ESPN's research found that since 1998, the team has lagged 3-1,640 in the last minute of the fourth quarter or the last minute of overtime. In this playoff alone, Indiana has accounted for two of these three wins.

“I think there are always comments on what I do, positive or negative, and that’s fun because a lot of times people know nothing about me and have something to say,” Halliburton said after the second round of win. “It’s usually people who don’t spend any time around me, but that’s part of it. I’m a basketball player and I love my job.

“…I feel that sometimes it needs criticism, sometimes it is not, but that’s part of it.”

Last year, in the 7th warm-up game against New York’s second round series at Madison Square Garden last year, Haliburton noticed a specific fan he heard issued criticism and determined to make him a fanatical inspirational tool, glaring at fans after each basket. The Pacers won and strengthened one of John King's strategies in the Eastern Conference Finals, they could face the Knicks or the Boston Celtics, which could be a playoff cent, or even an NBA final.

John King said Indiana should “just pay people to sit in the front row and talk to Ty because that’s when he’s gone.” “I didn’t worry about him when he went to New York. Spike Lee talked to the rest, and he liked that. I called it ‘It Factor’.

"If you're crazy with Tyrese, he'll definitely go."