Appearing on Monday’s episode of The Pat McAfee Show on ESPN (YouTube link), Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton said he feels “great” as he prepares for the 2026/27 season, according to Dustin Dopirak of The Indianapolis Star.

Haliburton missed the entire 2025/26 campaign while recovering from an Achilles tear and dealt with a bout of shingles earlier this year, which caused him to put on about 15-to-20 pounds as a result of the medication he was taking for it. He told McAfee that he has recovered from shingles and shed those extra pounds as he works through the final stages of his Achilles rehabilitation.

“I feel great,” Haliburton said. “Shingles is mostly beyond me now. I’ve lost the weight. I feel great. This is the best I’ve felt in a long time.”

Here’s more on Haliburton and the Pacers:

• While Haliburton admitted it was disappointing to lose what was essentially a coin flip on lottery night and miss out on a top-four pick in this year’s draft, he’s happy the team used that top-four protected first-rounder to acquire Ivica Zubac at February’s trade deadline. “Let’s think about it though, right?” Haliburton said on McAfee’s show, per Dopirak. “We don’t need a guard. The fifth pick was a guard. The sixth pick was a guard. … I like Zu. We’re trying to win right now. What if it would have worked out that we got Zu and a top-four pick? Y’all would have been like, ‘You guys are geniuses.’ It just didn’t work out. We took a gamble and I guess we lost, because we didn’t get the pick. But we got Zu, who is one of the best centers in the league.”
• The Pacers’ decision to waive Taelon Peter on Monday narrows the team’s competition for two-way slots to four players, Dopirak writes for the Indianapolis Star. Ethan Thompson and Kobe Brown currently hold two-way deals, while the team has a two-way qualifying offer out to Jalen Slawson and reportedly intends to sign No. 38 overall pick Braden Smith to a two-way contract as well. In a tweet, Dopirak speculates that the final spot will likely come down to Thompson vs. Slawson, since the Pacers just recently re-signed Brown and drafted Smith.
• In a subscriber-only story for the Star, Dopirak shares five takeaways from the Pacers’ Summer League games, noting that Slawson’s highs and lows make him a “fascinating wild card” and adding that Smith impressed as a play-maker despite not shooting well in Las Vegas. Dopirak also singled out undrafted rookie forward Rienk Mast, who will reportedly sign an Exhibit 10 contract with Indiana, as a player who impressed in Vegas.