Indiana Pacers Get Their Best News of the Summer: Haliburton Feels Like Himself

The best Indiana Pacers news of the week didn't come from a transaction wire or a Vegas box score. It came from Tyrese Haliburton's mouth. Appearing on the Pat McAfee Show on July 21, the franchise point guard said he's feeling "great" — his words, and he's earned them — after a rehab year that included not just a torn Achilles but a bout of shingles, and described his current state as "the best I've felt in a long time." For a team coming off a 19-63 season that only made sense as a bridge to his return, that's the whole ballgame. Everything else Indiana did this week — sorting two-way contracts, closing out a 2-3 summer league, quietly grading its draft-night gamble — is scaffolding around the guy who just said he feels like himself again.

Haliburton Sounds Like Haliburton Again

The rehab arc has not been pretty. Haliburton tore his Achilles in Game 7 of the 2025 Finals, missed all of 2025-26, and along the way picked up a shingles diagnosis whose medication added 15 to 20 pounds he's now shed. Back in January he admitted the process "has sucked," and that he'd caught himself asking why this was happening to him. The July version of Haliburton is a different broadcast entirely: healthy, lighter, and — notably — still willing to play front-office spokesman. On McAfee's show he defended the trade-deadline deal that brought in Ivica Zubac, arguing Indiana needed a center far more than another guard from the draft. More on why that trade still stings in a minute.

The team's official posture has been patience — his recovery was called "on schedule" at the end of June — and nobody in Indiana is going to rush an Achilles. But the difference between "on schedule" and "best I've felt in a long time" is the difference between hoping and planning.

Summer League Wrap: 2-3, and One Genuine Discovery

Indiana's Las Vegas trip ended at 2-3, with wins over Cleveland and New Orleans, and the record was beside the point. The Pacers went to Vegas to answer roster questions, and they got one loud answer: Jalen Slawson can play. The 26-year-old Furman product averaged 20.8 points, 6.4 rebounds and 3.2 blocks across five games, leading all of summer league in total blocks (16) despite spending most of his time on the perimeter. A year ago, in Philadelphia's summer program, he averaged 2.5 points. That's not a leap; that's a different player, and Slawson credits improved handle, conditioning and feel: "I'm understanding spacing better," he said.

The rest of the evaluation sheet was more mixed:

• Braden Smith, the No. 38 pick out of Purdue, shot a rough 26.4% from the field but dished 35 assists — the playmaking traveled even when the jumper didn't.
• Yuki Kawamura was a crowd favorite with 24 assists of creative playmaking, though he went 1-of-13 from three and his 5-foot-7 frame got hunted defensively.
• Rienk Mast, the undrafted Nebraska big, shot 47.9% with a polished offensive game and is reportedly headed for an Exhibit 10 deal.

Two-Way Math: Slawson In, Peter Out

Vegas performances have consequences, and this week Indiana acted on them. Slawson was rewarded with a two-way contract on July 21, and to clear the room the Pacers waived Taelon Peter, the 24-year-old shooting guard, after summer league wrapped. Per Forbes' Tony East, the two-way trio now stands as Slawson, Kobe Brown and Ethan Thompson — though Indianapolis Star reporting this week also indicated Smith was expected to land on a two-way, so the final configuration may still shuffle before camp.

It's worth pausing on how Kobe Brown got here: he came over from the Clippers as a throw-in to the Zubac trade and has stuck around long enough to hold a roster designation. Smith, meanwhile, cost the Pacers something real — Indiana traded 2025 second-rounder Kam Jones to Chicago on draft night for the No. 38 pick used to select him. Swapping a year of development for your preferred prospect is the kind of move that looks either shrewd or twitchy in about eighteen months, and Smith's Vegas showing (elite vision, broken jumper) kept the jury fully out.

The Zubac Trade, One Draft Later

Now, the wound that reopened this summer. At the February deadline, Indiana sent Bennedict Mathurin, Isaiah Jackson and draft capital — including a top-four protected 2026 first — to the Clippers for Zubac and Brown. Then the Pacers kept losing, the lottery balls didn't cooperate, and that protected pick conveyed at No. 5 overall, where Los Angeles happily selected Illinois sharpshooter Keaton Wagler. Watching Wagler average nearly 20 a game in Vegas while wearing Clippers colors was not a fun week for the Indiana fan base.

The counterargument, which Haliburton himself made this week, is that the Pacers got exactly what they wanted: a legitimate starting center. Zubac was averaging 14 points and 11 rebounds on 61% shooting at the time of the deal, and Indiana had a Myles Turner-shaped hole in the middle. Pair him with a healthy Haliburton and the trade reads very differently than it did on lottery night. It has to — the receipts are already framed in Los Angeles.

Where the Roster Stands in the East

Zoom out and the Indiana Pacers' picture is genuinely interesting. The 2025-26 season was the worst in franchise history — 19-63, two franchise-record losing streaks of 13 and 16 games, first team eliminated from playoff contention — but it was a season played almost entirely without the roster's spine. Haliburton missed all of it; Aaron Nesmith, Obi Toppin and Ben Sheppard missed big chunks. Pascal Siakam, who averaged 24.0 points and made his fourth All-Star team amid the wreckage, became eligible on July 6 for a three-year, $207 million extension, and how the front office handles that window is the biggest unresolved business of the summer.

The July additions fit a win-now-again frame. Kelly Oubre Jr. signed a fully guaranteed two-year, $17 million deal on July 1 — no options on either side, just two clean years. The 30-year-old wing averaged 14.9 points and 5.4 rebounds across three seasons in Philadelphia and brings the kind of functional size and self-generated offense the second unit sorely lacked while everyone was hurt. Slot Oubre and Zubac around Haliburton, Siakam, Nesmith and Toppin, and this looks less like a rebuilding roster than a contender that spent a year in witness protection. Two seasons ago this core reached the Finals; an East that just watched the Knicks win the title is not so deep that a healthy Indiana can be waved off.

What's Next on the Calendar

• August: full 2026-27 schedule release, plus any movement on the Siakam extension.
• Late September: training camp — the first real checkpoint for Haliburton's on-court progression.
• Mid-to-late October: opening night, and the unofficial end of the longest year of Haliburton's career.

The through-line in this week's Indiana Pacers news is that the bridge year is over. The two-way spots are sorted, the summer roster has been graded, the draft-night bets are placed, and the franchise player just told a national audience he feels like himself. Nineteen wins was the price Indiana paid to get everyone to this exact spot — now comes the part where they find out what it bought.