Tyrese Haliburton is healthy, refreshed and relaxed before ramp up to Team USA

Pacers All-Star guard Tyrese Haliburton will soon begin a rigorous ramp up for the Olympics after four weeks off. Catching up with him at his third annual youth camp in central Indiana.

CARMEL — Tyrese Haliburton is having a good offseason.

He’s sporting a new hairstyle and obvious tan, and he’s refreshed after returning from a vacation to Turks & Caicos Islands with his girlfriend and friends.

On Thursday, he was courtside at the Indiana Fever win over the Atlanta Dream. And now he’s spending the weekend hosting a two-day youth basketball camp for the third straight summer.

“I think when the season ends, you get time to do some R&R (rest and relaxation), be on vacation,” Haliburton said. “It's a great time to reflect on everything that you've done.

“Man, it was a great year. It was a great year for us as a team, me individually, of course, but we know there’s another step for us to go, and obviously not satisfied with just Eastern Conference Finals. We want to do a lot more.”

Before the season, Haliburton repeated how he’s tired of losing and was solely focused on team success. With such a young team, they went through a lot of new experiences together. First, they reached the championship game of the inaugural in-season tournament, they managed through several injuries and several roster changes, and then they reached the conference finals.

Nobody expected that. Not even the team.

Until this year, the franchise hadn’t reached the postseason since 2020 and hadn’t won a series in a decade. So this season was a huge step forward.

“I think you can say we're ahead of schedule in our rebuild,” he added, “but we know what we're capable of and our goal is to get right back where we were this year and do more.”