Pacers' Tyrese Haliburton after surgery to repair torn Achilles tendon: 'I'd do it again'

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Tyrese Haliburton has no regrets about trying to lead the Indiana Pacers to the franchise's first NBA title, even though his decision to play hurt ended in agony when he tore his right Achilles tendon early in Game 7.

Monday’s announcement of the injury — confirmed by Haliburton in a social media post — casts a pall on Haliburton's historic postseason run, which included a litany of incredible plays, buzzer-beating winners and occasionally unprecedented stat lines.

“Honestly, right now, torn Achilles and all, I don’t regret it,” Haliburton, who played Games 6 and 7 of the finals with a strained calf, said on social media. “I’d do it again, and again after that, to fight for this city and my brothers. For the chance to do something special.”

It was just the second finals appearance for the Pacers, and it came as a surprise given that Indiana began the season with a 10-15 record. Getting back there might take some time now that the two-time All Star point guard could miss all of next season.

Haliburton's surgery to repair the tendon was performed Monday by Dr. Martin O'Malley at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, the Pacers said.

Coach Rick Carlisle believes that when Haliburton heals he will be every bit as good — whenever that may be.

“He will be back,” Carlisle said following Sunday night's 103-91 loss at Oklahoma City. “I don't have any medical information about what's what, what may or may not have happened. But he'll be back in time, and I believe he'll make a full recovery.”

The Pacers wouldn't have made it so far without Haliburton helping to orchestrate three incredible playoff rallies from seven points down in the final 50 seconds of regulation.

But after scoring nine points, all on 3-pointers, in the first seven minutes of the biggest game in franchise history, Haliburton crashed to the floor and that was it.

The Pacers lost their leader and fell short in their title chase — again.

“We just kept battling because we wanted to make Indiana proud, make our fans proud,” three-time All-Star Pascal Siakam said. “We tried our best, but we’ve got to be strong. It’s hard to look forward into the future after you lose like this.”

But everyone else is, and the questions about Haliburton's playing status could make this offseason murkier than expected for Pacers president of basketball operations Kevin Pritchard.

There are silver linings, though.

At age 25, Haliburton is young enough to return to his pre-injury form and today's medical advances could help shorten the expected timetable of about 12 months.

“I will do everything in my power to get back right,” Haliburton said.

Many players, including some much older than Haliburton, have shown it is possible to make a full comeback from torn Achilles tendons, and Siakam has no doubt Haliburton will join the club.

“I know there's more coming, it's just a tough a situation,” Siakam said. “I think back a couple of years and basketball was just not fun, you know, and I got traded here and these guys, they just gave me a boost and playing with these guys is so incredible. I found joy with so much swagger and happiness.”

That's unlikely to change regardless of Haliburton's health because his effusive personality even in the face of adversity will continue to be a key feature for Indiana. Players such as Siakam won't allow that to change.

The Pacers also will begin next season with a strong roster and room to grow defensively.

Indiana's deep rotation routinely wore down playoff opponents with its quick tempo, a model it could replicate next season, as it has done each of the previous two even when Haliburton didn't play.

Nine of Indiana's top 10 players are under contract for 2025-26, with starting center Myles Turner the lone exception. Indiana's longest-tenured player has a cap hold estimated at slightly less than $30 million, meaning if he re-signs for something close, Indiana would be barely moving into the first apron and could stay out of that spending threshold with another move.

The Pacers also have strong guards in Andrew Nembhard and T.J. McConnell, who can run the show, as well as emerging defender Ben Sheppard.

Aaron Nesmith and Bennedict Mathurin also demonstrated their scoring prowess in the postseason. Both showed they can defend guards and forwards, giving Indiana perhaps the toughness and flexibility to contend in Haliburton's absence.

Without Haliburton, Mathurin and Sheppard can expect to play more minutes, as could forward Jarace Walker, a lottery pick in 2023.

For now, though, it remains hard to fathom — chasing a title with Haliburton possibly out for most, if not all, of next season.

"A lot of us were hurting from the loss and he was up there consoling us. That's who Tyrese Haliburton is,” McConnell said. “He's just the greatest.”

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA

Indiana Pacers forward Aaron Nesmith (23) reacts after losing the NBA basketball championship in Game 7 against the Oklahoma City Thunder Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Nate Billings)

Indiana Pacers forward Obi Toppin (1) leaves the court after losing the NBA basketball championship in Game 7 against the Oklahoma City Thunder Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Kyle Phillips)

Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton (0) falls to the court with an injury during the first half of Game 7 of the NBA Finals basketball series against the Oklahoma City Thunder Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Nate Billings)

Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton lays on the court after an injury during the first half of Game 7 of the NBA Finals basketball series against the Oklahoma City Thunder Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Nate Billings)

Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton reacts after scoring during the first half of Game 7 of the NBA Finals basketball series against the Oklahoma City Thunder Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)