Game 5 was set up to be Tyrese Haliburton’s defining moment — a chance to tilt the Finals in Indiana’s favor. Instead, it turned into a nightmare. From the opening tip, something felt off. Haliburton couldn’t find his rhythm, missed his first four shots, and ended the first quarter without a single point. Then came the dreaded sight: Hali clutching his lower leg and heading to the locker room. The ESPN update soon confirmed what fans feared — his lingering leg injury was very real. Though he returned with a wrap, it was clear he wasn’t himself. Less explosion, less control, and less of the Hali Indiana has leaned on all postseason. By halftime, the Pacers were already staring at a 14-point deficit — and the weight of uncertainty.

Back on the ESPN broadcast, the injury immediately became the night’s biggest story, sparking a fascinating and tense debate among the analysts. It was a perfect snapshot of the different pressures at play in the Finals.

First, former Warriors GM Bob Myers, offered the measured, empathetic perspective of someone who has been inside the locker room. He stressed the seriousness of what looked like a simple injury. “That injury is nothing to mess around with,” Myers explained. “You may sound simple calf tightness, the next thing is a calf strain which is a calf tear… anybody that’s played basketball knows it’s a hard thing to play through.” He finished by voicing concern for the rest of the series, saying, “if he doesn’t come out and have a big second half… you do worry about the next game.”

But then, Kendrick Perkins came in with a much different energy. Big Perk, never one to hold back, shifted the conversation from empathy to accountability. He started with a message to the Pacers management, “Sit him down.” He didn’t want to hear any excuses. “If you’re on the floor you need to produce,” Perkins stated bluntly. “This is the NBA finals this is game five and to be honest before he went down with the calf injury… he looks scared to death out there… he was going east to west instead of north to south.”

And then Stephen A. Smith took it a step further, calling for the Pacers to make a drastic move. “I’m not trying to be mean. I’m just trying to be factual,” Smith said passionately at halftime. “He. Looks. Bad. He was not active. He was not aggressive… I totally agree with Big Perks. Sit him down. Get him ready for Game 6. Because he’s a minus 16 on the floor. He ain’t helping the team!”

But coming out of the locker room, Rick Carlisle stuck with his star. But it didn’t last long. Hali finally scored, but he was clearly a step slow, and Carlisle pulled him from the game with 3:43 left in the period. And that’s when T.J. McConnell took over. With Haliburton on the bench, McConnell just caught fire, scoring a playoff career-high 13 points in the third quarter alone. All of a sudden, what looked like a blowout was an eight-point game, and the Pacers had life heading into the fourth. For a minute there, it looked like the Pacers might actually pull it. But the fourth quarter was a painful lesson in why hustle isn’t always enough.

How OKC’s defense exposed the real value of a healthy haliburton

The guy the Pacers were missing wasn’t just their All-Star but also their closer. Throughout these playoffs, Haliburton has been the engine of their late-game magic. This is the same guy who hit the game-winner to knock out the Bucks in overtime, the same guy who hit a wild, go-ahead three after grabbing his own missed free throw to stun the Cavs, and the same guy who sent the Knicks game to OT with a clutch jumper.

We all saw what he did in Game 1 against this same Thunder team. And it wasn’t a one-off, either. Coming into tonight, the guy was shooting a ridiculous 5-for-6 on clutch shots to tie or take the lead in the final 90 seconds. His mindset after that first win said it all: “Come May and June, it doesn’t matter how you get ’em. Just get ’em.”

However, OKC’s defense has given Indiana fits all series, but in the fourth quarter, they took it to another level. With Haliburton not a threat, defenders like Lu Dort and Alex Caruso didn’t have to worry about him breaking down the defense and finding an open man. They were free to play more aggressively, pressuring the other guards and forcing them into bad situations. The poise the Pacers usually have was replaced with panic, leading to a flood of turnovers from guys like Andrew Nembhard.

That’s when you really saw how much McConnell and Siakam rely on Haliburton, even when they’re playing great. T.J.’s energy, as his teammate Thomas Bryant said, brings “tenacity” and “life” to the game, but it’s not a half-court offense you can lean on to win a Finals game. And Siakam, as great as he is, thrives when a playmaker creates those first advantages for him.

Haliburton himself explained this perfectly when defending Siakam from criticism earlier in the Finals: “They’ve just got hands and they’re swarming the ball. We’re just trying to make reads and play the right way.” Without a healthy Hali to pull defenders away and make that first read, those swarms came quicker, and there was simply nowhere for Siakam to go.

In the end, Game 5 wasn’t just a loss but also a complete system failure that showed Kendrick Perkins was, in a way, right. The hobbled version of Haliburton wasn’t made everyone else’s job harder. This leg issue has been building, and in Game 5 it finally broke the Pacers’ offense. The question heading into a must-win Game 6 isn’t just if he’ll play, but if he can be that guy again. Because Game 5 proved they can’t win a title without him.