The craziest Tyrese Haliburton stat

He's shooting better than 100 percent on super clutch shots ... lemme explain

The Indiana Pacers did it again. Another miraculous comeback.

This time at Madison Square Garden. With Reggie Miller on the call. Tyrese Haliburton busted out the choke gesture. You can’t make this up.

Down nine with less than a minute left, Haliburton’s heroics — along with Andrew Nesmith’s flamethrowing — helped lead the Pacers’ ridiculous rally.

This Pacers team has now orchestrated 3 of the Top 7 most unlikely playoff comebacks in the play-by-play era which began in 1997, per Inpredictable.com data. ALL IN THE LAST TWO WEEKS.

They won all three of these games:

In the aftermath of last night’s miracle at the Garden, I found myself trying to wrap my head around the sheer brilliance of Tyrese Haliburton, who, as the great Trey Kerby pointed out, is the heir apparent to Reggie Miller in more ways than one.

Reggie famously had his ‘8 points in 9 seconds’ game.

But Hali has had his ‘12 of 14’ season.

Let me elaborate.

Ok, here’s the stat.

This season, Tyrese Haliburton has shot 12-of-14 on shots to tie or go ahead in the final two minutes.

This is not a typo.

I came across an earlier version of this stat when my Yahoo Sports co-host Dan Devine mentioned it in our Big Number episode a couple weeks ago. It was bonkers then and even MORE bonkers now because he added two more to the ledger in Game 1 on Wednesday night.

To recap: Hali’s game-tying three-pointer two-pointer at the buzzer on Wednesday night was his ELEVENTH made bucket in the closing 120 seconds with a chance to tie or take the lead this season. He then hit a TWELTH later in overtime. In only 14 shots.

TWELVE OF FOURTEEN. That’s 86 percent.

The two misses:

• A missed 3-pointer at the buzzer back on October 30 against Boston (Pacers won in overtime anyway)

• A 3-pointer on Wednesday night with 0:56 left in OT

The other 12?

Nylon.

And these were not easy shots!

Of the 14 shots that he took, 11 of them were jumpers. In the aggregate, the average shot distance on these shots was 18.5 feet. He made 86 percent of them! BANANAS bananas.

If we look at the league norm in this situation, players are shooting 37.9 percent on these super tense shots. Which makes sense given that defenses are locked in during these clutch situations and often know what the offense wants to run.

And yet, Haliburton is making these jump shots like they’re open layups.

Wait.

Actually?

He’s shooting BETTER than an open layup because layups are only worth two points.

Because six of those clutch makes were 3-pointers. Which means …

Once you account for the added value of a 3-pointer …

Haliburton is effectively shooting 107.1 percent on these clutch shots.

Yes, more than 100 percent.

He has scored 30 points on 14 shots, which equates to 2.14 points per field goal attempt. Divide by two and that’s how you get to field goal percentage of 107.1 percent.

Let me lay this out to you in a different way, OK?

Imagine I give you two options.

• Option 1: Prime Shaq has the ball under the basket alone 14 times.

• Option 2: Tyrese Haliburton’s series of 14 shots.

Which one do you take?

The correct answer is Option 2. It would get you more points. Shaq would dunk it 14 times for 28 points. Haliburton has scored 30 points on 14 shots. Crazy, right?

Let’s compare it to his peers. This season there have been 38 players who have taken at least 10 shots in this situation — tie or go-ahead in the final 2:00.

No one is higher than 70 eFG%.

Except for Hali who is at 107.1 eFG%.

If you charted it up to 100 eFG%, his datapoint wouldn’t show up.

Look at this:

Here are the 12 makes in a grid:

Some of them are wide open. Others are contested. And … wait, it gets nuttier.

As I was going through these shots, it dawned on me that some of them were and-1s.

Back in March, the 4-point game-winner over Giannis Antetokounmpo.

A couple weeks later, an And-1 in the closing minute on Luka Dončić.

So really, the 30 points on 14 shots isn’t totally accurate. Counting the ensuing free throw (he made each of them), Haliburton scored 32 points on 14 shots.

Or the equivalent of shooting 114.2% on twos.

Tyrese Haliburton.

Choking out opponents.

Breaking scales.