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đŸ©č The Injury That Flipped a Championship: Tyrese Haliburton’s Game 7 “What If”

4:55 in the First QuarterIndiana had the juice.Tyrese Haliburton was cooking. Already 3-for-4 from deep, 9 points on 5 possessions. The Pacers looked locked in.Then—disaster.A non-contact collapse. Torn right Achilles. And with it, a 59% win probability collapsed to dust.

Author

Samuel Rogers
June 25, 2025

🧠 Possession-by-Possession Efficiency: Before vs. After Injury

From efficiency to chaos:

  • First 25 possessions (pre-injury): 1.20 points per possession (PPP)

  • Final 75 possessions (post-injury): 0.85 PPP, steep decline in execution

  • Drop of 29% in offensive efficiency, mostly due to stalled pace and broken sets

📊 The sudden red shift shows how Haliburton’s absence derailed the Pacers’ structure.

📉 Win Probability Curve – Game 7, Minute by Minute

Before injury, the Pacers’ probability held steady, climbing as they hit their rhythm. But once Haliburton left:

  • Immediate reversal: WP dropped from 59% → 42% by Q2

  • By Q4, with turnovers piling up, it cratered near 10%

  • Final WP: 90% OKC, driven by +32 points off Indiana’s 23 turnovers

📈 Full visual curve shows just how steep the drop became.

🔍 What The Numbers Say

Metric

With Haliburton

Without Haliburton (G7)

Offensive Efficiency

116.3 ORtg

88.5 ORtg

Turnovers per 48

11.7

23.0

Assist-to-Turnover Ratio

5.6:1

1.4:1

TS%

58.1%

50.2%

Win Probability Swing

+17.3%

-28.5%

These aren’t just losses—they’re system failures without their floor general.

🔼 Futures Fallout

  • Pre-injury Pacers 2025–26 title odds: +800

  • Post-injury line: dropped to +1800 within 48 hours

  • RAPTOR-style adjusted model: Haliburton worth ~+7.8 wins above average guard

  • Projected 2026 win totals drop from 51.5 → 42.0 with injury extended

Indiana went from legit contenders to a team teetering on play-in purgatory.

📉 The “What If” That Stings

  • One of the best assist-to-turnover ratios in postseason history

  • 4 game-deciding shots in 3 rounds

  • A perfect system symbiotically tied to one player—and broken in under 5 minutes

The story isn't that Haliburton got hurt.
It’s that the Pacers, for a few minutes, showed they could win it all—until they couldn’t.

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