Tyrese Haliburton knows the time

PLUS: Playoff LeBron showed up in December.

Good morning.

Oberon, Titania and Puck With Fairies Dancing; William Blake; 1786

Let’s basketball.

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The Culminating Cuatro

Pacers 128, Bucks 119 — Giannis Antetokounmpo: hyper aggressive all night, 13/19 from the floor, 11/13 from the line, 37 points, two turnovers. The Giannis we have seen in huge games. Title-deciding games. Impossible to scheme against. Impossible to stop. Inevitable.

And the Pacers win. Why? Because the Bucks defense couldn’t slow down Tyrese Haliburton’s doom machine long enough to pull away.

Haliburton didn’t do it alone — he had 27-7-15 with zero turnovers — but he’s the blueprint and the fuel for this project. To be able to play at the pace Indiana achieves off of turnovers, makes and misses, and to be able to beat the defense back with lobs and hit-ahead passes, and to do it without turning the ball over: it’s miraculous and deadly.

Haliburton hits the right spot every time. But also, the receiving players have excellent hands. Myles Turner (who played a brilliant two-way game), Obi Toppin, Buddy Hield, Aaron Nesmith, Bruce Brown: they catch the ball cleanly, they don’t overthink it, they put the ball in.

Assuming you count Jayson Tatum as a forward and not the tallest shooting guard of all-time, Haliburton is the best guard in the East over Damian Lillard. I’m not sure I’d entertain a debate on this point. Lillard was dreadful in the first half against a truly bad Indiana defense that admittedly tightened up enough in a critical game. Dame came alive later on, but never looked better equipped to impact the game than did Haliburton. There’s a 10-year age difference between those two. It shows.

Haliburton has the juice and he has juice, if that makes happen.

Yes, he knows what time it is indeed. Dame responded to that moment in classic gracious, graceful Dame style.

There’s definitely a warning somewhere in there with Dame implying that he’s planning to cook Hali at a time to be determined later. The teams play a boring regular season game next week, and Basketball Gods willing a playoff series this spring.

Sticking with the Bucks for a moment: their bench is a huge problem. Indiana has a strong reserve unit, but none of those Pacers subs had extraordinary performances or anything. They were solid. The Bucks bench got washed out of the game. Here’s how I would frame it: Indiana was +9 in 11 minutes with Haliburton on the bench, and +14 in the 16 minutes with Turner on the bench (with some obvious overlap there). Adrian Griffin played a short bench with only three subs (Bobby Portis, MarJon Beauchamp, Cam Payne) getting much run and with Giannis and Dame both going over 40 minutes. That’s a sign of mistrust, and it’s earned. Things will get a little better when Pat Connaughton comes back. But this is a red flag situation.

I’m less concerned about another red flag situation from after the game. From B/R’s Chris Haynes: