Getting a win in guard Tyrese Haliburton’s return to the court was emotional and joyful, but the follow-up was a massive letdown for the Indiana Pacers, especially in the opening 24 minutes.
Two nights after getting outclassed in the first half, the Pacers hope their performance is vastly improved Sunday night when they visit the winless Brooklyn Nets.
Haliburton has scored 41 points and handed out 19 assists in his first two games after missing all of last season with a torn right Achilles tendon.
The star point guard returned with a double-double during a 123-120 win in the season opener at New Orleans before scoring 18 in Friday’s 121-105 loss to the Dallas Mavericks in Indiana’s home opener.
While the final margin was only 16 points, the Pacers were much worse in the opening half. Indiana allowed 77 points in the first half and trailed by as many as 37.
Against New Orleans, Indiana allowed 66 points in the first half. Through two games, the Pacers have been outscored by 44 points before halftime.
“It just simply comes down to an attitude and a disposition,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “And two straight games, we haven’t had it the way we need to have it in the first half.
“It’s not OK, and we all own it. Every single one of us. Start with me. I didn’t have these guys ready to play the way they needed to be ready to play.”
Indiana is hoping to avoid giving up 44 points in the first quarter like it did on Friday when Dallas wound up shooting 69.6% from the floor (16 of 23) and hitting 8 of 13 3-point tries (61.5%).
“There’s obviously a lot of room for us to grow,” Haliburton said. “We’ve got to be better. And I really put it on that first five. We’ve got to be a lot better in that starting group.”
Forward Pascal Siakam led the Pacers with 23 points after getting 30 in the season opener, but Indiana would like more consistency from center Ivica Zubac, who was held to nine after getting 16 in the season opener.
The Nets are trying to avoid losing their first three games for the second straight season. Last season, the Nets lost their first three by a combined 37 points as part of a seven-game skid en route to a 62-loss season.
Brooklyn’s two losses are by a combined 11 points, and the Nets nearly erased a 22-point deficit in Saturday’s 125-121 loss at Cleveland.
Michael Porter Jr. and Julius Randle have been Brooklyn’s leading scorers in each game and are hoping to see more help like the duo got in the second half. Porter led the Nets with 28 points and Randle added 23 while second-year guard Egor Demin contributed 15 of his 22 points in the fourth quarter.
Brooklyn scored 41 points and hit nine of its 16 3-point attempts in the fourth.
“I think it was the shot quality,” Nets coach Jordi Fernandez said. “We went from taking 35 good shots in the first half to almost 50 in the second. When you take the high-quality shots, they don’t all go in at the same time, but then if you keep shooting them, we had that stretch that they kept going in.”
The Nets will likely have a slightly different lineup because rookie Mikel Brown Jr. will sit on the second night of a back-to-back. Brown shot 3-for-10, scored eight points in 20 minutes and shared the court with Demin in the fourth. But the guard, the sixth overall pick of the 2026 NBA Draft, also dealt with an ankle issue in the preseason and is on a minutes restriction.
