Tyrese Haliburton is called a ‘bad guy’: People don’t want to see Indiana win anything

The Indiana guard caught up with Yahoo Sports senior NBA reporter Vincent Goodwill at USA Basketball training camp this offseason to discuss the Pacers’ role as spoilers last season and whether they can continue that this season.

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Video transcription

The last time we saw you in the Eastern Conference also looked very different.

Now you have Paul George with Philly.

New York is a bit packed at first.

Do you enjoy being as the heel?

No one likes being the crowd more, the wrestling villain kind of guy.

Do you like that or is that just the label we put on you?

I think it’s a label stuck on me.

I just love playing basketball and I understand that people don’t want to see Indiana win something they don’t want to see us do.

Well, you know, it’s a small market team.

For most of my life, Indiana was seen as boring, or whatever.

Um So I’m just in the game, just understanding it and that it’s the one that’s in our locker room, the one that’s in our traveling party against the world, actually, you know.

And so, um, I think that was kind of added to me because of the league, the Milwaukee Series, the New York Series league.

Uh, it’s kind of added to me.

But I mean, whatever the media puts on me is what’s being done to me, I think at the end of the day I just want to be known as a guy who gives us everything and competes 100% and, um, just tries to keep doing that .

But it gives you guys a bit of an identity when you lean into it. If there’s one thing that great teams all have, they have this identity and when you’re the giant killer, that’s something that you see in every building and everyone knows what happens when Tyrese Halliburton and the Indiana Pacers walk into your house.

No question.

I mean, teams don’t want to take us lightly.

They know what we bring to the table offensively.

They know how to keep us going every night.

So I think that regardless of what the perception of us is, at the end of the day our colleagues know that they have to be ready when they play against us.

And I think it’s more important than anything that teams respect us and know that they have to be ready to play.

And we know now that we have this success, every other team in our conference, every team in the league wants to have that success too.

And so, you know, when teams play us, they’re going to be ready to go.

It’s no, no surprise or anything.

So that’s the beauty of it: not, not to say that we now have the, we’ve gone from the hunt to the hunter because we didn’t win.

But I think when you have success, teams look at you as if we want to have the same success.

So they go after you.

And I think that’s the beauty of it.

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