Last season was a breakout for the Pacers, who made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals after finishing the regular season 47-35. Haliburton's final averages don't tell the full story of his season. He began the season with more potent stats, but a hamstring injury limited his minutes and production from most of January onward. In Haliburton's first 32 appearances, he averaged 24.2 points on 50/40/87 shooting, 12.7 assists, 4.3 rebounds and 1.2 steals across 34.1 minutes. In his final 35 regular-season contests, he averaged 16.8 points on 46/32/84 shooting, 9.3 assists, 3.7 rebounds and 1.3 steals in 31.1 minutes. Despite this downturn, Haliburton still returned back-end first-round per-game value for managers in category formats. That should be plenty encouraging for managers this year to select the point guard in the middle-to-late first round. The team is returning essentially the same group, though a full season of Pascal Siakam, plus the return and development of Bennedict Mathurin - who missed the end of the regular season and all of the playoffs - may draw some shot attempts away from Haliburton. That said, he's still one of the best passers and most efficient shooters in the NBA, so there should be no expectations of a dropoff.
