"Don't settle for passing the ball and getting people involved" - Jay Williams urges Tyrese Haliburton to be more selfish vs. Thunder
"Don't settle for passing the ball and getting people involved" - Jay Williams urges Tyrese Haliburton to be more selfish vs. Thunder originally appeared on Basketball Network.
Tyrese Haliburton has been the talk of the 2025 NBA playoffs because of his incredible shot-making late in games. With four improbable game-winners this postseason, many have started talking about Haliburton as one of the best clutch shooters in the league.
Advertisement
But while no one is questioning Haliburton's clutch gene, ESPN's Jay Williams called out the Indiana Pacers guard for waiting for crucial moments to unleash his offense.
According to Williams, if the Pacers want to beat the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2025 NBA Finals, Haliburton must be aggressive from the start and maintain his appetite for scoring throughout the entire game.
"Haliburton can close games, but champions open the game with intent and they set the tone; they don't just react to it… I need him to look at the rim at the beginning of the game," he said.
The Pacers win when Hali scores big
The Pacers are 32-3 this season, including 7-0 in the playoffs when Haliburton scores more than 20 points.
Advertisement
In Game 1 of the series against the Thunder, he only scored 14 points and took 13 shots. But the game-winning jumper overshadowed everything.
"I know that they got one on the road, but you can make a case that if he didn't hit that game-winner after Game 1, we'd be talking about the same tone. He wasn't aggressive. And this Indiana team is better when he comes out and attacks; just don't settle for passing the ball and getting people involved," Williams said on ESPN's "Get Up" program.
Going into the fourth quarter of Game 2, Haliburton only had five points on 2-7 shooting in 26 minutes of action. He scored 12 points in the first eight minutes of the final period to try to rally his team, but by then, the Thunder were already comfortably ahead, and his points were meaningless.
Advertisement
Related: Shaq still doesn't want to put Haliburton among the best clutch performers: "I'm not ready to be like, 'He's the next Reggie Miller"
Now is the time to be selfish
Meanwhile, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has been the opposite. He scored 19 points in the first half of Game 1 and finished with 38. The 2025 NBA MVP had 15 points on 11 shots in the first half of Game 2 and was clearly the aggressor from start to finish.
Through the first two games of the Finals series, Gilgeous-Alexander has already taken 51 field goal attempts, almost twice as many as Haliburton.
But some of that has to do with the team's offensive philosophies.
Advertisement
While Gilgeous-Alexander is the focal point of the Thunder's offense, Indiana's randomness allows anybody on the floor to lead the team in scoring. Some nights, that's Pascal Siakam. Other times, Myles Turner, Aaron Nesmith and Andrew Nembhard have big scoring games, and Haliburton has been more than willing to let his teammates shine.
Still, if there is a time to be selfish, it would be in the NBA Finals, especially given how much credit Haliburton deserves for the Pacers' unexpected run.
Playmaking is great. Setting up teammates is amazing. Pushing the pace and always looking for an open man is what basketball is all about. But at this point in the season, the Pacers might need their star player to be more of a scorer.
Related: "I think Indiana wins Game 3"- Isiah Thomas issues bold prediction as the 2025 NBA Finals shift to "The Hoosier State"
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jun 10, 2025, where it first appeared.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
44 minutes ago
- New York Times
The best two words in sports: ‘Game 7.' Are ESPN and the NBA ready?
Ahead of a highly anticipated Game 7 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night, the Athletic's sports media columnist Richard Deitsch connected with sports business editor Dan Shanoff to talk about the expectations and pressure — not on the teams, but on the league and its broadcast partner ESPN to deliver a great experience for fans. Advertisement Shanoff: It's a cliche, but it's also true — the two greatest words in sports are 'Game 7.' What kind of pressure are the NBA and ESPN under to deliver a presentation that matches the moment, or is 'Game 7' the kind of thing that no league or network can screw up, because it's so inherently interesting/dramatic? Deitsch: There was a very famous monologue delivered by Al Michaels prior to the start of ABC's coverage of the famous Miracle On Ice game: 'What we have at hand, the rarest of sporting events — an event that needs no buildup, no superfluous adjectives.' (Shanoff sidebar to readers: Take 60 seconds and watch the first 45 seconds of the broadcast, just Michaels' intro right at the start of this video. It is as close to perfect as it gets in sports TV.) That's true of all Game 7s and title games for major sports. The interest is inherent. The broadcaster has an immense duty to make you feel like you are about to witness a monumental event. Sunday's ABC presentation needs to highlight what the game means for these teams and in a historical sense. If ESPN/ABC is smart, they will go heavy in the pregame coverage on the last time we had a Game 7 in the NBA Finals. The best advice I can give — and this is often hard for ESPN — is to not make this game about ESPN or what an ESPN personality thinks. Make it about the game. Please. Quite frankly, I don't know to whom you might be referring. Speaking of making it about the game: ESPN play-by-play announcer Mike Breen's 'Blocked by James!' from the NBA Finals Game 7 in 2016 is one of the most iconic NBA broadcast calls of all time. Are he, Doris Burke and Richard Jefferson under any unusual pressure to deliver 'a moment?' The pressure will be to make sure they nail the game's biggest moments, but that is just as much on the producer and director. This announcing booth will have something that can benefit them for Game 7 — they were all part of the last time we saw a Game 7 for the NBA Finals: Breen was the play-by-play announcer, Burke was the sideline reporter and Jefferson played for the Cavs. They should delve into that during the broadcast. What's unique about this broadcast is that it is likely the last time we see them as a trio calling the NBA Finals. To that point, for ESPN, what does success look like in a game like this? Simple. Success is a broadcast where people talk about the game afterward and not the broadcast. Speaking of the game presentation, the league seems to have been unusually responsive to audience (and columnist) critiques of the game broadcast, including adding digitized Finals logos to the floor and bringing back televised pre-game player introductions for the first time in more than a decade. Why do you think that is, and what do you make of that approach? The NBA was reactive here, but it's better to be reactive with a popular change than not to react at all. I did a podcast last week with Jon Lewis, editor and founder of Sports Media Watch, and both of us were struck by how much the ABC broadcast of these Finals didn't feel much different than any other postseason game. Player introductions make a game feel bigger. It's not rocket science. For so many people who watch pro wrestling, it's the entrance to the ring that gets people the most excited. Think 'Cult of Personality' playing for C.M. Punk. This is where I think NBC is going to do well next year with the NBA. They event-ize everything. Advertisement And, as you said, 'Game 7' is inherently an event. Front Office Sports' Colin Salao posted an interesting point: The past four NBA Finals Game 7s saw a 65 percent lift in audience from the rest of the series. For this one, that would put it just under 20 million viewers, which would be the most watched Finals game of the 2020s. Of course, it won't compare to the Game 7 in 2016 — Cavs vs. Warriors, LeBron vs. Steph — which drew 31 million viewers (for good reason). Where do you think Monday's Game 7 nets out? Before the series started, I predicted (1) Pacers-Thunder would be a tremendous series, (2) that two small-market teams was not a formula for viewership success and (3) that if the series went seven, it would draw more viewers than this year's Ohio State-Notre Dame title game (22.1 million viewers). Two of those three predictions were correct. Given the viewership of the first six games, I don't think this series has enough momentum to get 22 million viewers. I think the Game 7 lift will be smaller than in years past. So I expect 15-18 million viewers for Game 7. Whatever the viewership number, the NBA and ESPN get bailed out because the average viewership for the series will not be as catastrophic as it would have been with a short series.
New York Times
44 minutes ago
- New York Times
How Pacers' counterintuitive strategy shut down Thunder's stars in NBA Finals
It's never too late to make a change in life — or at least in the most important moment of one's professional life. The Indiana Pacers are all about chaos. They've made this run to the 2025 NBA Finals by amplifying games to a blurring speed their opponents can't control. That includes a strategy that's rare in the NBA: A full-court press designed to wear out opposing ballhandlers. Advertisement But their Game 6 triumph over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday was, in one important way, a grand reveal that they are more than a one-note team. How did the Pacers solve the seemingly unsolvable problem of defending Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams? They pulled the chair on the entire Thunder offense. After several games of full-court pressure, Pacers coach Rick Carlisle took some heat off the Pacers' approach. Instead of pushing forward, Indiana's defenders dropped back and waited for the Thunder stars to come to them before bringing their pressure. As Caitlin Cooper of Basketball, She Wrote noted, the Pacers' pick-up points on Thunder ballhandlers were much more conservative than they have been all series. Average pick-up distance for the Pacers on defense in Games 1-5: 56.9 feet Average pick-up distance for the Pacers on defense in Game 6: 41.4 feet Big difference — Caitlin Cooper (@C2_Cooper) June 20, 2025 The Thunder weren't ready for it. As the Pacers' coverages evolved throughout the game, their primary objective was to keep Thunder ballhandlers from getting downhill. That required slowing things down on defense to provide a chance for more precision and balance. Indiana loosened the grip on its fastball, putting some more bend on its cutter that Gilgeous-Alexander couldn't figure out. The result was eight turnovers for the MVP. The Pacers' problem with full-court pressure coming into Thursday was that it invited Thunder players — particularly Isaiah Hartenstein — to set step-up ball screens in the backcourt. Indiana couldn't control the vast space underneath those picks, so the Thunder stars had tons of room to rub off their screeners and get wherever they wanted. Indiana's adjustment was to wait until those ballhandlers, particularly Gilgeous-Alexander, crossed the half-court line before springing their trap. On the first play of the game, the Pacers stacked off-ball defenders high into the gaps, steering the MVP into a tight pocket against the sideline. The way Andrew Nembhard suddenly flipped around to pick up Gilgeous-Alexander caught Hartenstein by surprise. Even that play was higher up the floor than Indiana operated for much of the rest of the game. Indiana's guards set their pick-up points in a more typical area closer to the 3-point line, which made most of their pick-and-roll coverages more effective. When Williams or other guards screened for Gilgeous-Alexander, Indiana was able to switch more comfortably because there wasn't an acre of space behind them. There was less pressure to contain the ball at the point of attack when switching, since the ballhandler would run into help quickly if they got past Indiana's primary defender. Advertisement This forced the Thunder into more isolation plays, making it easier for the other Pacers defenders to aggressively clog the paint. Gilgeous-Alexander lost steam as the game went on, with his possessions looking more listless. That helped Aaron Nesmith and T.J. McConnell pick up some steals by double-teaming Gilgeous-Alexander from behind. The prior two games, both Thunder wins, made it clear that while the Thunder stars weren't looking to take pull-up 3s off high screens, they gained momentum from driving into space without a body in front of them. Even when the Pacers' bigs crept above the screen level to double-team Gilgeous-Alexander, he still had space to dribble around those defenders and pick up speed. He is a master at staying in motion and then pushing into gaps to break through coverage. In Game 6, the Pacers forced the MVP to do everything over a squared-up defender and lots of help. Remember Pascal Siakam sitting in the gap on the first play of the game that resulted in a turnover? He was now able to essentially be a secondary dropper on Gilgeous-Alexander pick-and-rolls as part of Carlisle's bet to sacrifice some 3-point coverage to clog the star's driving lanes. If the Pacers kept pressing full court, Gilgeous-Alexander would have come off those high ball screens with more paths to speed past any gapped defenders. But pushing back the pick-up points made it easier for Siakam to plant in driving lanes behind Myles Turner when the center was guarding up to the screen level. The strategy against Williams followed the same spirit, though it differed slightly. For one, the Pacers started ducking under high screens for Williams, allowing Nesmith to catch up from below the action while the screener's defender pushed Williams' drives sideways. Advertisement But Carlisle finally accepted he'd need to put bigs on Williams if necessary. I wrote Thursday morning that the Pacers should start mixing in more pick-and-roll switches involving Siakam, Obi Toppin and Turner, even if it left them on an island guarding Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams in isolation. Siakam has been the Pacers' best help defender in this series, and having him guard either of the two Thunder stars takes him away from that role. Now, the Pacers have moved away from lineups with Siakam at center, giving them another big on the floor to take on the lane-clogging role if he needs to switch at the point of attack. In Game 6, Siakam was able to stay in front of Williams and Gilgeous-Alexander, then contest high to be an effective antidote. His length threw off Gilgeous-Alexander's tempo. Most defenders have to be within reaching distance of the Thunder guard to create leverage, but Siakam is long enough to sit a full dribble back. He can close his hips to shuffle backwards when Gilgeous-Alexander hits his trigger step into a drive and use his wingspan to contest any potential stepback jumper. That makes it easier for help defenders to sit deeper into the gaps and get Gilgeous-Alexander to pick up his dribble early. In contrast, there were many possessions in Games 1-5 where Nembhard and Nesmith stayed in front of the Thunder's drivers, but lacked the length to contest mid-paint stepbacks. The Pacers won't be able to catch the Thunder off guard two games in a row. But Oklahoma City's shooting, which has been mediocre in this series, will have to improve in a high-pressure situation to make the Pacers pay for dropping back into the gaps. The Thunder may need to rely even more on their defense, which failed to stop a hobbled Tyrese Haliburton from taking control of Game 6. Game plans can only do so much on the biggest stage in basketball. It's unlikely the Pacers will be able to avoid crunch time again, as the Thunder will have plenty of counters to the Pacers' new approach. But at least it got the Pacers to a Game 7, where a battle of wills will determine the next NBA champion. Zach Harper runs through everything you need to know heading into Sunday's Game 7.
Associated Press
an hour ago
- Associated Press
Duke's Cooper Flagg, Rutgers' Ace Bailey are the one-and-done headliners among NBA draft's forwards
Cooper Flagg and Ace Bailey were the first two names mentioned last summer when it came to college basketball's top incoming freshmen. Now they're the headliners among forwards in the NBA draft. Flagg led Duke to the Final Four and became only the fourth freshman named Associated Press men's national player of the year. Bailey put up quality numbers at Rutgers, though in a losing season. Flagg and Bailey were ranked 1-2 in the 2024 recruiting class by 247Sports, Rivals, On3 and ESPN. Now Flagg is the projected No. 1 overall pick, while Bailey is a likely top-five prospect. Here's a look at the position entering Wednesday's first round: Cooper Flagg, Duke STRENGTHS: The 6-foot-8, 221-pound Maine native has a versatile all-around game far more advanced than his age, with room to develop as he turns 19 in December. He led Duke in scoring (19.2), rebounding (7.5), assists (4.2), steals (1.4) and blocks (1.4). He shot 38.5% on 3-pointers and 84% from the line. He proved he can thrive as a scorer, such as when he had an Atlantic Coast Conference freshman-record 42 points against Notre Dame. That included ranking in the 85th percentile or better in converting as the ballhandler in pick-and-rolls, on post-ups and in transition, according to Synergy's analytics rankings. He also thrived as a playmaker, while his length allows him to alter shots, get into passing lanes and finish at the rim — sometimes over a defender. And then there's his competitive edge, with multiple examples of Flagg's willingness to take on big moments and receptiveness to firm coaching. That included coach Jon Scheyer lighting into Flagg during a first-half timeout in January for playing soft (in so many words) against N.C. State, then Flagg responding with 23 of his 28 points after halftime. Flagg also went for 30 points, six rebounds, seven assists and three blocks as Duke held off Arizona in a shootout win in the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16, a performance Scheyer called 'one of the best tournament performances I've ever coached or been a part of.' CONCERNS: Not many. He can always get stronger, though he checked in at the combine 16 pounds heavier than his listed weight at Duke (205). He could also cut down on turnovers considering he had 15 games with at least three, though only two came after Feb. 1. Ace Bailey, Rutgers STRENGTHS: The 6-8, 203-pound Bailey is a versatile shotmaker with athleticism. He averaged 17.6 points and 7.2 rebounds with stepback skills, a good midrange game and the ability to shoot off the dribble or on the catch. Notably, he ranked in Synergy's 94th percentile for contested catch-and-shoot looks (39 of 81, 48.1%). Bailey can attack the paint and stretch defenses with his range. He had five January games with at least four made 3s while shooting 34.6% from behind the arc on the season. The versatility and athleticism indicates defensive potential, too. He averaged 1.3 blocks and had six games with at least three blocks in Big Ten play. CONCERNS: Adding strength would help him against bumps and physical play by stronger defenders, such as improving on finishing just 42.1% of layups in the halfcourt at Rutgers. There's a streakiness in his shot, such as making 12 of 31 free throws (.387) over a six-game midseason stretch or 7 of 39 3-pointers (.179) after January. There's also the awkward question of Bailey's impact beyond stats considering the Scarlet Knights had a losing record despite Bailey teaming with another one-and-done prospect in likely No. 2 overall pick Dylan Harper. Kon Knueppel, Duke STRENGTHS: The 6-7, 217-pound Knueppel was an efficient wing scorer with size and defense-stretching range. The freshman lottery prospect made 40.6% of his 3s and ranked in Synergy's 98th percentile when it came to overall spot-up shooting (52.9%), with nearly three-quarters of those attempts coming from behind the arc. He also ranked sixth in Division I by shooting 91.4% at the foul line, and stood out as ACC Tournament MVP when Flagg was sidelined by injury. And Knueppel had 10 games with at least four assists as a secondary playmaker. CONCERNS: Knueppel isn't an elite athlete, so there's a question of matching up against quicker or more explosive opponents. Colllin Murray-Boyles, South Carolina STRENGTHS: The sophomore lottery prospect has a strong 6-7, 240-pound frame and a nearly 7-1 wingspan. He thrived in the halfcourt (shooting 57.9% to rank in Synergy's 88th percentile), and has contributed as a scorer (16.8) and rebounder (8.3). He also averaged 1.3 blocks and 1.5 steals, indicating the potential for him to defend multiple positions. CONCERNS: His shooting touch is a major question after he went 0 for 5 from 3-point range as a freshman, then just 9 for 34 (.265) as a sophomore. He also made just 69.5% of his free throws in two college seasons. There's also the risk of being the 'tweener' who is too slow to guard outside and too small to defend in the paint. Others of note: — CARTER BRYANT: Arizona's 6-7, 215-pound freshman reserve shot 37.1% on 3s and a block per game despite playing just 19 minutes a night. Throw in a 39.5-inch max vertical leap, and he's a possible lottery pick. — NOA ESSENGUE: The lanky 6-9, 194-pound Frenchman is a potential late lottery pick. Essengue, who turns 19 in December, has been honing his versatile skillset with Ratiopharm Ulm in Germany. — LIAM MCNEELEY: The freshman jumped right in as a starter for two-time reigning national champion UConn. He's a first-round prospect as a floor-stretching wing with size (6-7, 215) and shotmaking ability, highlighted by him going for 38 points against then-No. 24 Creighton and 22 points in the NCAA Tournament against eventual champion Florida. — WILL RILEY: Illinois' 6-8 freshman from Canada is a first-round prospect with the potential to play as a guard or as a wing forward. He showed potential as a scorer and passer at Illinois, though he needs to develop physically with a 186-pound frame. — HUGO GONZALEZ: The 6-6, 205-pound Gonzalez is a late first-round prospect who played this season with Real Madrid in his home Spain. The 19-year-old offers potential with perimeter size, shooting range and ability to attack off the dribble and perimeter size. ___ AP NBA:
