This time last year, Tyrese Haliburton was preparing to lead the Indiana Pacers on a magical playoff run that ended in the 2025 NBA Finals. It was there that Haliburton’s fortunes sharply turned.
Early in Game 7 against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Haliburton crumpled to the ground and pounded his hands on the floor. The two-time All-Star and All-NBA guard tore his Achilles, and the Pacers came up short of the championship.
Haliburton’s entire 2025-26 season was lost to his Achilles recovery, which would have been bad enough, but in late February, the Pacers announced Haliburton had been diagnosed with shingles.
The Pacers finished their season at 19-63 on Sunday, and Haliburton met with reporters for his end-of-season exit interview on Monday. He brought more bad news.
“I would tell everybody over 50 years old to get the [shingles] shot, first of all,” Haliburton said, per James Boyd. “This has sucked. My dad had it during the Finals, on his stomach, and a lot of people will get it there. But mine has been on my face. I couldn’t even go in front of a camera if I wanted to early because my eye was basically closed shut, and it was all over my face.”
Haliburton’s update only got worse from there, as read below:
“They told me that I would be really itchy. I wasn’t itchy for the first two weeks. I just had a bad rash. Then, once the rash went away, the itching came, and it’s been miserable. Hence why every time you’ve seen me, I’ve been in glasses — just to not touch my face, really. Really, that’s the only reason I’ve been wearing them. I’ve lost part of my eyebrow. My eye is always swollen from itching it.
I have good days and bad days, but for the most part, it’s bad days. It has not been any fun. I’m still, honestly, dealing with it. I’ve been taking unbelievable amounts of medication to try to get rid of it. It hasn’t worked. It’s obviously caused me to gain weight and look a little bigger. That’s been a topic of conversation through social media and stuff, but what can you do? But, yeah, it’s not been fun.
Hopefully, it goes away here pretty soon. It’s hard to really tell. Nerve pain — I’ve been having nerve pain now for two months. And in the world for nerve pain, for people who have had that before, [two months] is not very long. So, I hope it goes away soon, but there’s no way to really know.”
Shingles is a viral infection caused by the varicella-zoster virus, which is infamous for causing chickenpox. Anyone who had chickenpox runs the risk of developing shingles later if the virus reactivates, per the Mayo Clinic. There isn’t a definitive trigger known to reactivate the virus, but “it may be due to lowered immunity.”
On Monday, Haliburton also joined “The Pat McAfee Show” and said that he was supposed to resume playing 5-on-5 after the NBA All-Star break in February, but shingles delayed his progress.
Haliburton told McAfee that he’s seen people “calling me Tyrese Haliburger on social media” in reaction to his weight gain.
In more positive news, Haliburton posted on April 8 that he “played 5 on 5 today for the first time since June.” With McAfee, he said that he doesn’t “think about the Achilles anymore” when he works out.
In early February, before news of his shingles diagnosis, Haliburton posted a YouTube video of his “first week back” working on the court after suffering a torn Achilles.
See clips of Haliburton with McAfee below.