Tyrese Haliburton’s no-show Game 5 leaves Pacers on the ropes

Tyrese Haliburton came up small on the big stage.

The Pacers star turned invisible when they needed him most, in a desultory 121-91 second-round Game 5 loss to the Knicks.

The All-Star failed as both an offensive engine and a team leader.

“We’ve got to do a better job of coming together as a group. … [We got] a little frenzied,” Haliburton said. “Obviously, the Garden has a great environment … but we’ve got to do a better job of coming together as a group. We kind of split in the first quarter, and then never really responded the right way. We need to do a better job coming together as a group and that starts with me as the leader.”

After excelling the prior three games, Haliburton had just 13 points and five assists, his minus-22 by far the worst of any Indiana starter.

“I’ve just got to do a better job of being aggressive,” Haliburton said. “I think we go back to Game 1, I said the same thing after Game 1. It’s more on me than it is on what anybody else is doing. So I’ll fix that next game.

“I just didn’t do what I’m supposed to today and I’ll be better in Game 6.”

Coming into that Game 1 loss with a bad back, Haliburton was ineffective with just six points on six shots.

But in the three games that followed, the point guard had bounced back to average 29.7 points on .550 shooting, and hit 17 of 37 from deep.

That’s the Haliburton they needed Tuesday.

They didn’t get him.

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The Haliburton they got was tentative, dribbling around on the perimeter, not getting downhill and not defending.

“Yeah, my shows were terrible in the first half, didn’t do a good job of getting the ball out of [Jalen] Brunson’s hand and I got split on a couple, didn’t impact the ball and he got around me a few times,” said Haliburton. “It’s something that obviously worked for them. They’re gonna continue to go to it in Game 6. So watch the film, see where I can get better and improve on that going to the next game.”

For Haliburton to have any more success Friday, the Pacers are going to need to run. And that means they’ll need to defend.

“If we don’t get stops and rebounds, our game is not going to look good. We’re not going to be able to get the ball out. All of our playmakers are not going to have opportunities to get the ball and attack,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “You take the ball out of the net, you’re climbing an uphill battle.”

Haliburton needs to run to excel. But with Indiana taking the ball out of the basket all night, they were faster out of the postgame locker room than they were in transition all evening.

“Where we excel offensively is getting in transition, running. But it’s difficult to do that when you’re taking the ball out the net every play,” Haliburton said. “The biggest thing that hurt us offensively was the rebounding, because we never played in transition. Those two go hand-in-hand.”