INDIANAPOLIS — Tyrese Haliburton admitted he was motivated by Wally Szczerbiak’s year-old diss, and he took it out on the Knicks in a record-setting performance Saturday night.
The All-Star point guard scored 22 points and set a franchise record with 23 assists in a thorough 140-126 pasting of the Knicks.
He even stared down and called out multiple times to Szczerbiak, who was seated courtside while serving as the game analyst alongside Mike Breen for MSG.
“Who?” Haliburton deadpanned after the game.
Of course, he knows exactly who Szczerbiak is after the former NBA player had called Haliburton a “wannabe fake All-Star” during a broadcast last season. Szczerbiak admitted on the air during Saturday’s game that “it wasn’t my finest hour” and he was “dead wrong.”
Szczerbiak said he also reiterated that mea culpa while speaking with Halliburton’s father after the game.
“It went really well,” Szczerbiak said during the MSG post-game show. “I told him ‘My apologies, that was not my finest hour’ when I called his son a ‘wannabe fake All-Star.’
“He’s an absolute superstar. He showed it today, it was on display. John Haliburton was a great guy. He said ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ve all had moments like that, and we forgive you, my man.'”
Pressed on his interaction with Szczerbiak after the game, Tyrese Haliburton called it an “extracurricular activity,” but admitted it contributed to his motivation.
“The Knicks beat us last year,” Haliburton said. “They swept us in some games we felt like we should have won. I got hurt against them last year. That’s a really good team over there coached by a really good coach, so anytime you get to compete against a team like that, you gotta be ready to play.
“All that other stuff is extra, just having fun playing basketball.”
Haliburton joined Magic Johnson and John Stockton as the only players in NBA history to record back-to-back games with at least 20 points and 20 assists.
