Tyrese Haliburton would sit in front of his television in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and watch titans create their legends.
Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers besting the future Hall of Famers on the Boston Celtics. LeBron James and the Miami Heat out-slugging the dynastic San Antonio Spurs. James, again, finding apotheosis for his Cleveland Cavaliers to conquer the invincible Golden State Warriors.
From that seat, he saw history. He witnessed men become immortal.
“And you go out in the driveway,” Haliburton told me six years ago, “and try it.”
In the shadow of Wisconsin’s Northwoods, between Appleton and Fond du Lac on the banks of Lake Winnebago, that driveway hosted a young boy pretending to be a legend. It was the site of countless game-winners in NBA Finals Game 7s. Each time, it was the lanky kid with a huge smile and even bigger dreams taking that final shot.
“Since I was four, five years old, the plan has always been that (basketball) is going to be my life,” Haliburton told me as he stood in the Sukup Basketball Complex as a sophomore at Iowa State. A year before he was drafted in the NBA lottery. Four years before his first All-Star selection. Five years before winning an Olympic gold medal. Six before the biggest game of his life.
“When I was little, you try to tell mom, ‘I’m going to be a professional basketball player.’ ‘Do something realistic,’ (she’d reply).
“But it’s real. It’s realistic for me. That’s always been the plan.”
That plan has brought Haliburton from his driveway Game 7s to the real thing.
Haliburton, the former Iowa State star and current face of the Indiana Pacers franchise, is 48 minutes of basketball away from an NBA championship. From that boy in that Oshkosh driveway becoming a legend. A basketball immortal.
Indiana. Oklahoma City. Game 7.
“We’ve got one game,” Haliburton told reporters June 19 after the Pacers extended the NBA Finals to that final, decisive and historic game on Sunday, June 22. “Nothing that’s happened before matters, and nothing that’s going to happen after matters.
“It’s all about that one game.”
It’s one game that Haliburton lived out thousands of times in that driveway outside John and Brenda Haliburton’s house. Now, instead of his older brothers or imaginary defenders standing in his way, it’s the 68-win Thunder and NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Rather than a make-believe crowd going wild, it’ll be 18,000 Oklahomans raised on rodeos raising hell.
What could be better?
Haliburton has delivered perhaps the most-clutch postseason in NBA history with four game-tying or game-winning shots in the last five seconds of a contest. That comes after a season of clutchness in which Haliburton is 13 of 15 on game-tying or -winning shots in the final 2 minutes of a game.
Now that dude gets an NBA Finals Game 7.
You don’t need to be getting shots up in your driveway to daydream about what could come next.
This is the stage that has made titans of the game. Created the legends that endure for generations. Produced the iconic moments that transcend memory.
It becomes the foundational fabric of the game.
In steps the kid from Oshkosh, the pride of Ames and the star of Indianapolis with a bum calf and a legendary run of heroics that makes the moment all the more dramatic and dangerous.
For those 48 minutes Sunday night, there is no before to consider. No after to ponder.
Just every bounce of the ball to agonize over. Just every second with everything on the line. Just a lifetime of work and dreams and fear and doubt and perseverance meeting its culmination.
There’s no going back.
“I don’t really create a Plan B,” Haliburton said those six years ago, “because I feel like you don’t put enough effort into Plan A if you’ve got a Plan B.”
Sunday night millions of people – including thousands of children from places not unlike that small hamlet on Lake Winnebago – will sit in front of their televisions to watch a new generation battling for their place among the basketball gods.
To see if that kid from the town between Appleton and Fond du Lac will become a titan of the game. A legend.
From the Oshkosh driveway to a spot among the stars.
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.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Hines: Tyrese Haliburton gets the ultimate clutch opportunity in Game 7
Reporting by Travis Hines, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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