OKLAHOMA CITY — This is not how Indiana star Tyrese Haliburton saw the season ending.
He was outside the locker room, a walking boot on his right leg, standing on crutches, greeting his teammates as they came off the floor at the end of their season. There were hugs. There were tears.
The end, by any measure, was heartbreaking. And the pain of Game 7 of NBA Finals is going to linger over the Pacers for a long, long time.
Haliburton — who was playing with a strained right calf — tumbled to the court in a heap, immediately began punching the floor in frustration and needed to be helped to the locker room in Game 7 of the NBA Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday night.
Indiana had a one-point lead at halftime, but in the end, the Pacers lost their best player, then their verve, then their shot at the NBA title. The Thunder won 103-91, after the Pacers managed only 43 points in the second half.
''Doesn't surprise me at all,'' Pacers guard TJ McConnell said when asked if he was surprised Haliburton was there at the end to console teammates. ''That's who he is as a person, a teammate. He put his ego aside constantly. He could have been in the locker room feeling sorry for himself after something like that happened, but he wasn't. He was up greeting us. ... That's who Tyrese Haliburton is. He's just the greatest, man.''
John Haliburton, Tyrese's father, told ABC late in the first half it was an Achilles tendon injury, as the replays of the play clearly indicated. An MRI is still likely to confirm that, but there are simple tests — without a need for imaging — that doctors typically use to determine whether there is a serious injury to the tendon.
The Pacers quickly ruled out Haliburton for the rest of Game 7 with that they called a lower right leg injury, and replays appeared to show something popping in the back of his leg. The injury happened with 4:55 left in the first quarter.