Tyrese Haliburton was not on the NBA’s 6 p.m. ET injury report for Wednesday’s opener in New Orleans, so the night is set to be his first regular-season game since he tore his right Achilles tendon in Game 7 of the 2025 Finals. That was June 22, 2025. He played seven minutes that night, per Basketball Reference, and none in the 2025-26 season.
I went back through four recent Achilles comebacks: Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, Jayson Tatum and Dejounte Murray. My takeaway: their shooting split two ways, but every one of them missed games after coming back. Together they played 97 of the 160 regular-season games their teams played from the night they returned. For Indiana, the plan for the nights Haliburton sits matters more than his three-point percentage in November.
Durant is the best case, and the timeline fits
Durant ruptured his right Achilles in Game 5 of the 2019 Finals in Toronto on June 10, 2019, sat out all of 2019-20 and came back on Brooklyn’s opening night, Dec. 22, 2020. That’s about 18 months. In his first 10 games he averaged 30.7 points on 54.8% shooting and made 29 of 60 threes, per his 2020-21 game log. He finished the season with a .666 true shooting percentage, higher than the .631 he posted in his last full season with Golden State.
Haliburton’s path looks more like Durant’s than like the other three. He has had about 16 months, three preseason games and a regular-season start on opening night instead of in the middle of a schedule. In those exhibitions he scored 48 points in 54 minutes on 19-of-36 shooting, 8-of-15 from three, per the ESPN box scores.
Two of the midseason returns had to find their shot
The other three came back in the middle of a season, and two of them shot poorly early.
Thompson missed two full seasons, the first after tearing his left ACL in the 2019 Finals and the second after tearing his right Achilles in a November 2020 workout, per NBA.com. He returned in Golden State’s 39th game, on Jan. 9, 2022. Over his first 10 games he shot 40.6% from the field and 24-of-73 (32.9%) from three in 23.4 minutes a night, per his 2021-22 game log. He finished that season at 38.5% from three and shot 41.2% the next year.
Tatum tore his right Achilles in Game 4 of Boston’s second-round series against the Knicks on May 12, 2025, and returned on March 6, 2026, in the Celtics’ 63rd game. That was less than 10 months later. In his first 10 games he shot 38.3% from the field and 30.3% from three. Over all 16 games he played he averaged 21.8 points with a .541 true shooting percentage, down from .582 in 2024-25, per Basketball Reference. His 2026-27 opener at Detroit on Tuesday, per his game log, went 6-of-23 from the field and 0-of-7 from three, with 11 assists.
Murray is the counterexample. He ruptured his right Achilles on Jan. 31, 2025, against Boston and returned on Feb. 24, 2026. He played 14 games for New Orleans and posted a .580 true shooting percentage, well above the .494 he had in 31 games before the injury, per Basketball Reference. He did it in 27.8 minutes a game, though, down from 32.6.
On the shot, the four split two and two. Haliburton’s preseason points to the Durant end, and his 38.8% three-point shooting in 2024-25, per Basketball Reference, gives him a high floor to fall back to.
The games column is where all four agree
Here’s how many of their team’s regular-season games each player appeared in after returning, per Basketball Reference:
| Player | Return date | Team games from return | Games played |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kevin Durant | Dec. 22, 2020 | 72 | 35 |
| Klay Thompson | Jan. 9, 2022 | 44 | 32 |
| Jayson Tatum | March 6, 2026 | 20 | 16 |
| Dejounte Murray | Feb. 24, 2026 | 24 | 14 |
Durant, the best shooter of the group after his return, played fewer than half of Brooklyn’s regular-season games. The best rate in the group was Tatum’s 16 of 20, or 80%.
Haliburton has already had one interruption. He missed the Oct. 10 preseason game against Atlanta after what head coach Rick Carlisle called “a mild tweak of his right ankle” in the opener at Iowa State, according to the team’s game rewind. The MRI was clean and he played the next two games.
Haliburton told reporters at media day on Sept. 28, per TSN: “I am healthy. I am 100%. There will be no restrictions.” Carlisle was more measured: “Do not anticipate a lot of limitations, but we will make sure that we go at the correct pace.” I’d read “correct pace” as a hint that Indiana will rest him on some nights even when nothing is wrong.
Why the Pacers should plan for it now
The first test comes fast. Indiana plays at Brooklyn on Sunday and at Milwaukee on Monday, the first back-to-back of the season, then hosts Brooklyn and Atlanta on Nov. 1 and 2, per the ESPN schedule. Our Pacers schedule page has the full list.
If Haliburton sits one of those nights, the point guard depth is thin. Backup point guard T.J. McConnell (right hamstring strain) was ruled out of the opener on the league’s injury report, along with Aaron Nesmith (left hamstring strain). That leaves Andrew Nembhard as the main ballhandler, and he can handle it: he started all 57 games he played last season and averaged 16.9 points and 7.7 assists, per Basketball Reference.
The problem is behind him. I wrote after the preseason that the Pacers’ bench lost the second halves while McConnell sat, and Kelly Oubre Jr., who started in Nesmith’s place in the preseason finale, is the wing Indiana is leaning on while Nesmith is out. Pull Haliburton out of that lineup on a back-to-back night and Indiana is asking a second unit without McConnell to cover a lot of minutes. The injury report page tracks who is available each night.
Haliburton’s comeback can still go well. The version Indiana gets in April depends on how many games he plays between now and then. Durant’s return was the best of the four, and he still missed 37 regular-season games. If Haliburton plays 66 or more of Indiana’s 82, he’ll have stayed on the floor at a higher rate than any of the four.
The first thing I’ll check is Monday night in Milwaukee. If he’s in uniform for both ends of that back-to-back, that tells me more about this season than anything he shoots on Wednesday.