With a win tonight, former Cyclone Tyrese Haliburton would be the toast of basketball

There have been Iowa collegians who went on to play for NBA champions.

Though he didn’t play in the Finals, Iowa State’s Talen Horton-Tucker was on the Los Angeles Lakers’ 2020 title team. At least one former Iowa Hawkeye was on a championship club from 1991 through 1994 (B.J. Armstrong and Bob Hansen, Chicago; Matt Bullard, Houston).

Iowa’s Don Nelson played on five NBA champs as a Boston Celtic. Fred Brown and John Johnson helped Seattle to the 1979 crown.

However, you can easily argue that no one who played college ball for a school in our state has been as impactful in an NBA postseason as former Iowa State guard Tyrese Haliburton this year.

Haliburton is the face of the Indiana Pacers team that will play the Oklahoma City Thunder tonight in Game 7 for the NBA championship. Had he not sank a last-second jumper with three-tenths of a second remaining in Game 1, the Thunder would be the champs right now.

Incredibly, it was Haliburton’s fourth game-winning or game-saving shot of the playoffs. He made the deciding layup with 1.3 seconds left in the deciding Game 5 of Indiana’s opening-round series win over Milwaukee. He made a 3-pointer with 1.1 seconds left to cap the Pacers’ Game 2 comeback from 20 points down to beat Cleveland.

Against New York in the East Finals, the Pacers trailed by 17 points in the fourth quarter of Game 1. Haliburton hit a last-second jumper to send the game to overtime, and Indiana won in Madison Square Garden.

Things looked bleak last Monday when the Thunder beat Indiana, 120-109, in Oklahoma City for a 3-2 series lead. Playing with a calf strain, Haliburton didn’t make a basket and scored just four points.

His usefulness for Game 6 was in question all the way until he got warmed up during the game. He played 23 good minutes, scored 14 points, and the Pacers shelled the Thunder, 108-91.

It has been easy for Cyclone fans to root for the Pacers in these playoffs because Haliburton, five years removed from Iowa State, has been “Loyal Forever True” to his old school.

On March 1, Haliburton returned to Hilton Coliseum to be feted by Iowa State for being the first former Cyclone to win an Olympic gold medal in basketball, as a member of the 2024 U.S. men’s squad.

A banner saluting that accomplishment was raised at halftime of Iowa State’s men’s game that day.

“The place went nuts,” recalled Mike Green, Iowa State’s director of traditions in the Student-Athlete and Letterwinner Engagement office at ISU.

“You could tell that playing for Iowa State meant a lot to him,” Green said. “If you convey those thoughts and feelings, you’re going to be a fan-favorite. Your fans are going to rally around a guy that you know loves wearing the cardinal-and-gold.

“He named his dog ‘Ames.’ He always talks about what a great time he had at Iowa State. It’s not fake, it’s real.”

Haliburton barely had a long-enough career at Iowa State for fans to get to know him, but everyone could see this was a player.

In 2018-19, Steve Prohm’s Cyclones were stacked with talent and went 23-12. Horton-Tucker and senior Marial Shayok, who also played in the NBA, were the stars. Haliburton was a 6-foot-5, 172-pound freshman from Oshkosh, Wis., who wasn’t a heralded recruit.

“He got here and he was so skinny,” Green said, “but then you started watching him play and it was like ‘Geez, this guy’s pretty good.’ He has a funky shot, but it goes in. He really moves the ball, and our offense is much more fluid when he’s on the court.

“I remember Coach Prohm knowing right away he had to get him in the lineup.”

Haliburton had 17 assists in his 10th college game, breaking Eric Heft’s 39-year-old single-game school record.

“I got through (former Iowa State star point guards) Jeff Hornacek and Jamaal Tinsley and Monte Morris,” said Heft, a color commentator on Cyclone radio broadcasts since 1979. “I was living on borrowed time.”

Haliburton started 34 of 35 games as a freshman, averaging 6.8 points and 3.4 assists, hardly the numbers of an NBA prospect. But basketball people knew, and he was widely mentioned as a first-round candidate as he entered his sophomore season.

An NBA scout attended an ISU practice before the team had played a game in Haliburton’s freshman season.

“He was there looking at Talen Horton-Tucker,” Heft said, “but afterward he told an analyst for Coach Prohm that your highest draft pick is Haliburton.”

Haliburton averaged 15.2 points and 6.5 assists for the Cyclones in 2019-20 before fracturing his left wrist in the 22nd game and being done for the season. He was the 12th pick in the 2020 NBA draft, to Sacramento, which traded him to Indiana in 2022.

Tonight, Haliburton plays for a ring. If Indiana needs one shot to win, you know who is likely to take it. Iowa State fans will again watch excitedly and nervously.

“I’ll be a pacer,” Heft said, “and I don’t mean an Indiana Pacer.”

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