Tyrese Haliburton said he’s seen “ridiculous” think pieces about the December game ball drama between the Indiana Pacers and Milwaukee Bucks. On Thursday, he set the record straight, at least from his perspective.
Haliburton shared details on JJ Redick’s podcast about the night and the beef that overshadowed Giannis Antetokounmpo setting the Bucks’ single-game scoring record. Haliburton described the chippiness between teams during and after the game, which Milwaukee won 140-126.
“My trainer was sitting courtside, my strength coach growing up, so I walked out, gave him my jersey, whatever. I turned around, and there was some talk, back and forth,” Haliburton said. “You know, the Bucks do the huddle in the middle after games. So there was some talk from that little huddle towards our group as we were walking off.
“So I’m watching it as I’m walking off … (assistant coach) Lloyd (Pierce) is waiting for me, and then one of the Bucks assistant coaches is going crazy on the other side,” Haliburton said. “So he’s kinda walking towards LP, and it’s just me and LP out there cause everybody’s gone, so that’s when those two are kind of now having a conversation and I’m in the middle of it, and I’m kinda trying to calm down but I’m also like, ‘C’mon, you can’t walk over here,’ like it’s not that serious.”
He said that’s when Antetokounmpo and other Bucks players approached him and they exchanged words.
Still words being exchanged after the game has gone final.#FearTheDeer #NBA pic.twitter.com/IttboBCGsb
— Bally Sports Wisconsin (@BallySportWI) December 14, 2023
“And I think one of our assistants, Mike Weinar, had the basketball — had a basketball, not the basketball, a basketball. And he walked off with it and I think Giannis saw it.”
At that point, Antetokounmpo, who was under the belief that the Pacers had taken the game ball and walked off with it, and a few other members of the team raced up the tunnel leading to the Pacers’ locker room and tried to chase them down to get the basketball. After the parties were separated, both teams made their way to their respective locker rooms and the situation appeared to be resolved. However, postgame interviews made the situation more confusing.
“What happened after the game was unfortunate,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said at the time. “There was a misunderstanding about the game ball. It was Oscar Tshiebwe’s first NBA point. So we always get the game ball. We grabbed the ball and a couple of minutes later several of their players ended up in our hallway.”
Video from the Bucks telecast on Bally Sports Wisconsin showed that Milwaukee appeared to end up in possession of the basketball. But Antetkounmpo was still not convinced when asked that night if he could confirm that he had the game ball.
“I have no idea. … I have a ball, but I don’t know if it’s the game ball. It doesn’t feel like the game ball to me. It feels like a brand-new ball,” Antetkounmpo said at the time.
Speaking to Redick, Haliburton said the Bucks had the game ball the whole time and Antetkounmpo ran into the tunnel after the backup ball.
“We took the backup ball to give to our rookie who scored his first points. … We never had the (game) ball. The ball was never in our possession,” he said.
Haliburton said he didn’t know at the time which ball Antetokounmpo chased after.
“It ran too long, with the, ‘We don’t know if it’s the correct ball. It doesn’t feel like the correct ball.’ It just became blasphemous after that,” Haliburton said.
When asked if there’s now a rivalry between the teams, the two-time All-Star responded: “Is it a rivalry? We’ve never played in the playoffs. They have a championship. I’ve never played a playoff game. That’s a rivalry?”
But Haliburton added, laughing: “I’m all for agendas though, if you want this to be a rivalry, if we wanna call it a rivalry, I’m all for it.”
Required reading
(Photo: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)
