There are countless NBA players who have beaten the odds to get to the league, proving coaches and scouts wrong at every turn. Only one of them, though, has been brought to tears along the way because a 3-year-old blocked his shot during a high school AAU practice.
That player would be Tyrese Haliburton, Indiana Pacers star and current Olympian with Team USA. A decade later, Haliburton can laugh about the moment, which, along with getting cut from a different AAU team, he credits as one of the "best moments of my life."
Haliburton was a high school freshman in Oshkosh, Wis., when he learned from his parents that the Playground Warriors, an AAU team he'd played on since middle school alongside Tyler Herro, the future Miami Heat guard, no longer felt he had a future with the program.
"They never said that I was cut, but my parents told me that it was essentially like, 'He can come if he wants to,'" he says. "So, like -- that, I think, was worse."
The decision -- and the fact that he learned about it from his parents, not from the club -- still rankles him years later, so much so that the episode remains "probably the main motivation," he says, for all that came after. "Because I don't ever want to get back to a place like that."
He showed up for his first practice with Milwaukee-based Wisconsin United, a three-hour round-trip drive from home in Oshkosh, "pissed at the world," with faded self-belief and a jump shot that began well below his waist, a remnant of a childhood where he lacked the strength to use textbook form. United's coach, Bryan Johnikin, tried tinkering with his new guard's unique shot angle by using his 3-year-old grandson as a defender. Johnikin asked the boy to hold out his hand while Haliburton shot. Haliburton's release was so low that the preschooler blocked it.
"I left in tears because I was so embarrassed of what was going on," Haliburton says.
Haliburton no longer starts his shot so low that it can be blocked by toddlers, but he still has one of the most unorthodox shooting forms in the NBA. He starts with the ball out in front of his chest and catapults it to the rim with an immense amount of sidespin. No one would teach a player how to shoot like that, and coaches at every level attempted to fix his shot, only to give up after seeing how consistently it goes in.
In six seasons between Iowa State and the NBA, Haliburton has only shot below 40% from behind the arc once -- last season when he came back early from a hamstring injury. Here's a look at Haliburton's shooting prowess:
| Season | Team | 3PA | 3P% |
|---|---|---|---|
2018-19 | Iowa State | 3.2 | 43.4 |
2019-20 | Iowa State | 5.6 | 41.9 |
2020-21 | 5.1 | 40.9 | |
2021-22 | Kings/Pacers | 5.1 | 41.4 |
2022-23 | Pacers | 7.2 | 40.0 |
2023-24 | Pacers | 7.8 | 36.4 |
Haliburton has talked often about how his lack of strength growing up forced him to fling the ball from his hip in order to generate enough power to get it to the rim. Now 6-foot-5 and 185 pounds, he no longer has a strength issue, but remains comfortable with his unique form.
His coaches and teammates, too, have grown used to celebrating as it falls through the net.
"To the average fan, or anybody who plays, obviously it isn't textbook," Pacers guard TJ McConnell told the Wall Street Journal earlier this year. "But there's no denying how effective it is. It's straight cash, is the best way I can put it."
