Tyrese Haliburton has garnered plenty of controversy these playoffs as his Indiana Pacers made quick work of the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round. First, he was named the league’s most overrated player by his peers, and his father, John, later got into an altercation with Giannis Antetokounmpo and was banned from the team’s games indefinitely.
In the end, though, Haliburton’s play did the talking. In the first round, he averaged 17.6 points and 11.6 assists per game and closed out the series with a game-winner in Game 5, and he opened the second round with an impressive 22-point, 13-dime performance on Sunday against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Indiana will seek to go up 2-0 tonight at 7 p.m. ET, and the Cavaliers have plenty of injury concerns, with Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, and De’Andre Hunter all carrying injury designations.
Despite the uncertainty surrounding Cleveland’s lineup, the Pacers are 7.5-point underdogs at DraftKings Sportsbook, with the point total set for 229. Below, I’ve detailed my favorite prop bets centered around Haliburton.
Best Tyrese Haliburton Prop Bets on DraftKings Sportsbook
Tyrese Haliburton 20+ Points (+105)
The Cavaliers’ defense isn’t as bad as it looked in Game 1, given that Indiana shot 52.8% from beyond the arc. But Haliburton’s route to 20 points in the first game was fairly sustainable. He made just two of his six three-pointers, continuing a playoffs-long shooting slump in which he’s made just 27.7% of his three-point attempts so far. In fact, Cleveland didn’t even get a defender within six feet of him on five of his three-point attempts, and he made just one of them. He also shot just 16.7% on wide-open triples in the first round, but at some point, his accuracy is bound to normalize towards his regular-season mark, which was 42.1%.
Haliburton was able to reach 20 points in Game 1 despite the poor shooting performance from deep because he made seven of his nine two-pointers, his most efficient outing within the arc so far these playoffs. He made all three of his shots inside the restricted area, his only shot from floater range, and three of his five mid-range jumpers. None of the defenders that newly-minted Coach of the Year Kenny Atkinson tried against him was particularly effective, but with the best defender on the roster — and, indeed, in the entire league — questionable, Haliburton has a path to another efficient performance tonight.
Tyrese Haliburton O4.5 Rebounds (+120)
Thanks to their twin towers of Mobley and Jarrett Allen, the Cavaliers have dominated the boards so far these playoffs, allowing the fewest rebounds per game to opposing players. Indeed, even in Game 1, the teams still recorded the same number of boards despite the Pacers’ victory. But Haliburton is a decent rebounder; although he only averaged 3.5 boards per game during the regular season, he’s still six-foot-five with a six-foot-eight wingspan, and his performances on the glass — five-plus rebounds in each of the five games in the first round — were critical in helping his team oust the Bucks.
True, he only had three rebounds on Sunday, and Milwaukee wasn’t a rebounding juggernaut, but Sunday’s game still a minuscule sample size compared to the entire first round. He only had five rebounding chances, compared to the 9.2 per game he had in the first round, and his average board came more than six feet further away from the basket. But for guards, rebounds are more tied to the luck of the bounce than to anything technical — just one of his first-round boards was contested — and just as the ball just happened to bounce away from Haliburton on Sunday, it might bounce towards him tonight. At any rate, he’s taller than either Garland and Donovan Mitchell and should be able to box them out if need be.
