INDIANAPOLIS – With Tyrese Haliburton back from his torn right Achilles and a mainly healthy core going into the regular season, the Pacers look to be near the top of the NBA again two seasons after losing Game 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals.
Indiana begins the season on the road against the New Orleans Pelicans on Wednesday. After seeing how close they came to their first NBA championship, many Pacers fans expect them to get it done this year. Those inside the facility expect the same.
“The expectations outside of this building have never been bigger than they are in the building,” Haliburton said Tuesday. “There’s no real worry. Us – as a group of guys, as a team – know what our goals are, and that’s to win a championship. It’s been that way for the last few years, so it doesn’t change. But we gotta get back to the championship habits and take it a day at a time.”
The NBA and Eastern Conference look far different than the last time Haliburton was on the court.
The Pacers were the New York Knicks’ kryptonite in 2024 and 2025, but now the Knicks are the reigning champs after Mike Brown took over for Tom Thibodeau as coach. The Philadelphia 76ers added LeBron James and Jaylen Brown this summer. The Miami Heat traded for Giannis Antetokounmpo, and the Toronto Raptors reacquired Kawhi Leonard. The San Antonio Spurs missed the playoffs in 2025, but now Victor Wembanyama has established himself as a superstar, and they have championship expectations after falling to the Knicks in the Finals.
If the Pacers make it back to the Finals this season, it will be against significantly different competition. The team understands that.
“Going into the season, we know how everyone’s gotten better in the league,” Pascal Siakam said. “The East got better, the West got better – everyone’s better, and everybody’s got aspirations to win. … Every single game’s gotta count. For us – first game of the season away from home – you just gotta go out there, and it’s an opportunity to show our chemistry and how together we can be.”
With the added competitiveness of the East, starting the season off right will mean more for the Pacers. In recent years, that hasn’t been a strength of this organization. The Pacers started 1-13 last season, 10-15 in 2024-25, 14-14 in 2023-24 and 17-17 in 2022-23.
In the years that Rick Carlisle has coached Haliburton, the Pacers haven’t tend to find their rhythm until winter begins. They hope to change that this season.
“For as long as I’ve been here, we have never started the season hot,” Haliburton said. “I think that’s something we’ve talked about as a team, as an organization – how we can have a good start to the year.”
While Haliburton played in three of the team’s four preseason games, Wednesday will be the first game that counts since he tore his Achilles. Haliburton previously said he was “a little too excited” going into the preseason opener at Iowa State, where he played in college. Haliburton felt that things slowed down in the other preseason games and that he shouldn’t have a problem with excitement in New Orleans.
“I feel like I’m in a good place from a basketball standpoint; I feel like I’ll continue to be there,” Haliburton said. “That first game, there was a lot going on being back at Iowa State.”
Haliburton said that before the first preseason game he drank Gatorade’s Fast Twitch energy drink, which he did before games in the past. By the time the game came, he realized the drink was unnecessary.
“I did not need that Game 1, and I took it and I was a jittery mess,” he said. “So I think we’re done with that for a little bit, and I stopped taking it the rest of preseason. So I think it’s worked out fine, so we’ll stop taking that for a little bit and I think I’ll be fine.”
After the Pacers had a franchise-worst 19-63 season without Haliburton, many national NBA talking heads and fans of other teams have low expectations for the team this season. Others believe that the Pacers can win the East again.
The team’s star players have noticed who projected them where before the year, and they want to prove the doubters wrong and the believers right.
“I got a lot in the bookmarks, I got a lot that I keep in my head,” Haliburton said. “But to be fair, the NBA’s really hard to predict, and especially now with all the parity in our league. So I try to be fair as much as I can, but of course I keep it all in my head, and I like to see where people have us – good and bad.”
Said Siakam: “I just feel like people are counting us out, which is good for us. Keep working, put our heads down and we know what we have. I think it’s one thing to talk about it, it’s another to go out on the floor and do it.”
The Pacers acknowledge that it’ll be a long 82-game regular season that has its ups and downs. The mission for this team is to stay grounded throughout the year and build habits that will allow them to make a deep playoff run in the spring.
“We’re just a process team,” Carlisle said. “Outcomes are distractions, and we’ve just gotta keep our eye on the ball with how we do things on a day-to-day basis. The results hopefully take care of themselves.”
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Tyrese Haliburton on media predictions for Pacers: 'I got a lot in the bookmarks'