Tyrese Haliburton on returning to Hilton Coliseum for the first time
Former Cyclone Tyrese Haliburton on returning to Hilton Coliseum for the first time since leaving for the NBA
- Tyrese Haliburton of the Indiana Pacers is NBA haters’ new favorite target.
- Haliburton, a former Iowa State basketball star, is one of the best point guards in the NBA.
- NBA superstars frequently are the target of criticism by their fellow players in the league.
One of the most important things to know about the NBA in order to understand it is that it’s a hater’s league.
Players, teams, coaches, franchises – everyone and everything in that league is both a hater and the hated. They are often defined not by what they have done or can do, but about what they haven’t done or are perceived as unable to do.
It’s not a place where many are celebrated. There are some who reach that summit, no doubt, but that’s usually after years of bulldozing through the hate. And that summit? That’s just a brief respite until the hate once again flows.
Michael Jordan was a numbers collector, not a winner, until he got past the Pistons and became the greatest winner in maybe all of sports. Shaquille O’Neal was an unserious player who would never utilize his size and talent to dominate the league, until he did just that. The Spurs won five NBA titles over 15 years, sure, but my God were they boring. Steph Curry was a small guard with bad ankles before he became the game-changing best shooter who ever lived.
Hating on LeBron James, the guy who very well could be the best basketball player in the history of the universe, is essentially its own multi-million dollar industry.
The NBA is a player-hating paradise.
Which brings me to Tyrese Haliburton.
The former Iowa State star has become an increasingly popular target for haters in recent weeks as his Indiana Pacers make their way through the NBA playoffs, which has included a 4-1 series win against the Milwaukee Bucks and a Game 1 Eastern Conference semifinals win against the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Haliburton Hate kicked into overdrive last month when The Athletic published its anonymous players’ poll in which his peers voted him as the NBA’s most overrated player. Then, Haliburton’s own father did him no favors when he made his way onto the court to taunt Giannis Antetokounmpo, an MVP, NBA champion and generally one of the most-liked players in the league, after the Pacers dispatched the Bucks on a Haliburton series-winner in overtime, no less.
Maybe it was Haliburton’s first All-Star season that hinted at his potential for superstardom in his third NBA season. Or maybe it was his second All-Star appearance last year and his subsequent All-NBA selection that did it. Coulda been his spot on the gold-medal Team USA Olympics squad last summer, too.
Great accomplishments, certainly. In fact, they probably make Haliburton not only the best pro to ever come out of Iowa State basketball, but probably the best Cyclone pro in any sport in school history.
None of that, though, is a better indication of Haliburton’s upward trajectory that finding himself as the haters’ new favorite object.
Because you cannot be loved in the NBA until you are hated.
It is a ruthless, vicious place where some of the planet’s top-tier haters reside. The hating in the NBA is so advanced that it’s not even your flaws that become the locus of criticism. No, that would be too remedial, and NBA Haters, well, they run the PhD program in hating.
In the NBA, it’s your own success that proves you’re actually trash.
Haliburton’s first All-Star appearance? Who cares – came on a bad team he couldn’t elevate past a 35-47 record. Well, what about that second All-Star selection and a spot on the All-NBA third team while taking the Pacers to the Eastern Conference Finals? Simply proof that Haliburton isn’t good enough to take a team to the actual Finals, say the Haters. An Olympic gold medal as a member of one of the best basketball teams ever assembled? Well, Haliburton barely played and if you can’t crack the rotation on a team with more future Hall of Famers than not, well, you’re actually no damn good.
That $250 million contract is just another thing Haliburton won’t be able to live up to, scream the Haters.
A great signal of Haliburton’s rise through the NBA ranks is that his dad mildly, but still unbecomingly got into a one-sided tiff with Antetokounmpo and was a major part of the NBA news cycle for a couple days.
When the hate goes there – into overdrive after a small dust-up not by the main character but by a family member – you know the guy’s got game.
Because NBA hate is really just jealousy and admiration. It’s a function of the small world that makes up the basketball universe from middle-school AAU onward as well as the oceans of money at stake.
The NBA is basically a small town where everybody has known everybody for decades and they’re all vying for a piece of the same fortune.
That’s what makes it perfect for player hatin’.
While this might be rarified air Haliburton is currently operating in, it’s not totally unfamiliar territory.
A hater’s best weapon is reminding its target of what it isn’t and can’t do.
That’s basically been Haliburton’s entire basketball life. He couldn’t be a high-major player. He would never be a lottery pick. He couldn’t be the face of a franchise. He would never be among the NBA’s elite.
Haliburton’s unimpressive basketball pedigree, his dramatic style of play and that ear-to-ear smile that leaves his face only when he’s talking trash to opponents all contribute to the hatin’.
When a guy who should have gone to Northern Iowa, who shoots a set shot like it’s 1957 but passes like he can see the future and who talks and talks and talks while cooking you to a crisp, well, that’s for the haters.
So, here we are, with Haliburton steadily moving up the NBA’s ladder where the stakes are high and the hate is loud.
That just means you’re making progress toward that summit, where the things they say you could never do become the things you’ve conquered. Where the hate turns to adulation.
The hate is just the surest sign you’re on your way.
Iowa State columnist Travis Hines has covered the Cyclones for the Des Moines Register and Ames Tribune since 2012. Contact him at thines@amestrib.com or (515) 284-8000. Follow him on X at @TravisHines21.
