The limp wasn’t the first thing that people noticed. The face was the culprit.
Something didn’t seem right when Tyrese Haliburton sat down in front of the cameras during the Pacers’ exit interviews in April. His eye appeared swollen. There seemed to be a missing portion of an eyebrow. His quiet, slightly worn-out appearance didn’t quite match the carefree, beaming guard who had almost led Indiana to a championship the previous season. Then there was the weight. The body that participated in Game 7 against Oklahoma City was about thirty pounds lighter. The mean little monikers had already done their job online. “Haliburger.” “Fatso.” Turning a real person into a joke is a common digital sport.
At first, most people were unaware that Haliburton had been suffering from facial shingles for almost two months. Someone who is barely twenty-six has shingles on their face. It is uncommon. It hurts. He clarified that the medication he was taking to combat it continued to make him hungry. Watching that exit interview gives me the impression that he had been holding this inside for some time, knowing how it would appear and how the internet would react, before finally deciding to just say it.
In January, he had already acknowledged that part of his weight gain was due to “drowning my sorrows in cookies and ice cream.” From a young athlete watching his team’s title hopes fade away from the sidelines, that is a brutally honest statement. One season had ended, and another had been erased due to the Achilles tear in Game 7. After winning the Eastern Conference, the Pacers fell to 19–63, the worst record in team history. It’s difficult not to question how much of that weight gain was simply the result of a competitive person’s body being abruptly told he couldn’t compete.
The shingles followed various physicians. distinct prescriptions. Of all things, a Botox injection. It didn’t really work at all. He informed Pat McAfee that he had been taking the medication for eight weeks with minimal improvement. He claimed that the new drug kept his appetite in overdrive. As a result, the deliberate bulking he had done during his early Achilles rehabilitation—strong, lifting, and eating to rebuild—became something quite different. He didn’t want the weight. Unuseful weight. To stop himself from rubbing his eyes, he even began to wear spectacles.
All of this seems a little unfair. During those Finals, Haliburton persevered despite a severe calf injury. In an attempt to win a title, he tore his Achilles. A year of physical setbacks and online mockery has been, in a sense, the reward. You get the impression that the public conversation about athlete bodies hasn’t really developed as you watch it play out. The jokes begin, a player grows larger, and hardly anyone stops to inquire about what’s really going on beneath.
If there is any good news, it is that his Achilles appears to be cooperating. He’s sprinting. It’s a five-on-five game. He has frequent conversations with Jayson Tatum, who recovered from the same injury and now resembles himself. In Indiana, there is hope that the upcoming season will be the kind of comeback tale the league adores. The shingles will go away. The burden will be lifted. The moniker will be discontinued.
It remains to be seen if all of that results in the same explosive guard that Indiana lost in June 2025. However, it’s important to keep in mind that he is twenty-six years old, obstinate, and has been subtly tougher this year than most people realized.