There was apparently more than meets the eye with Tyrese Haliburton’s benching by Team USA at the Paris Olympics.
Brian Windhorst of ESPN reports this week that the Indiana Pacers star Haliburton was slowed in the Olympics by a “minor” leg injury and underwent an MRI (despite Team USA not announcing anything).
Windhorst adds that Haliburton was also caught up in a “numbers game” that led to his benching but will still have a future with USA Basketball.
It is unclear if the leg injury is related to the nagging hamstring injury that hampered Haliburton for the second half of the 2023-24 NBA season. But he appeared in just three of six games for Team USA at the Olympics and was a DNP for the other three. Haliburton only got sparse playing time even in the games that he did play in, averaging 2.7 points and 0.7 assists a game.
Team USA obviously had more than enough heavy artillery regardless of Haliburton’s status and ended up winning their fifth straight Olympic gold medal with a 98-87 victory over France on Saturday. But Haliburton, 24, does have an elite skill (his ability to play with pace as a dynamic offensive creator) and likely would have made a far bigger contribution to the team if he was fully healthy. That is in contrast to the other Team USA star who was effectively a healthy scratch for most of the Olympics.
