INDIANAPOLIS — There’s a 60-foot mural on the side of the building at 127 E. Michigan St. in downtown Indianapolis. It depicts the city’s most beloved basketball player.The one who went toe-to-toe with Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing and Shaquille O’Neal. The one whose posters still line the walls of local bars and barbershops. The one who, every time he comes home, receives a champion’s applause — even though he never was one.“It will always haunt me not winning a chip,” Reggie Miller recently said on the “All The Smoke” podcast. “I had opportunities, and that’s why it just burns me.”Miller isn’t just a legend in these parts. The greatest Indiana Pacer ever is a folk hero. Invoke the Hall of Famer’s name around those who witnessed him in his prime and they’ll say Miller still deserves a ring, despite falling two wins short of one in the 2000 NBA Finals. Even without it, they’ll also argue that Miller deserves a lot more than that mural.
WATCH: Have you seen this incredible mural of Reggie Miller in downtown Indy?! Our #SKY59 drone shows it towering the city at 60 feet tall! More: https://t.co/qxNk06PjZW pic.twitter.com/tT6k7hIhBm
— Olivia Purevich (McClellan) (@OliviaPurevich) October 19, 2018He deserves his own statue, which may be built someday, but for now, only one athlete in the city has a statue outside of his old office: Peyton Manning.The former Indianapolis Colts quarterback and Hall of Famer is immortalized in nine feet of bronze in front of Lucas Oil Stadium. He’s the only athlete loved just as much as, if not more than, Miller is in and around Indianapolis.Tyrese Haliburton could join them.The 25-year-old’s late-game heroics in these playoffs have galvanized the city, if not the whole state. And for gray-haired Hoosiers, Haliburton’s clutch gene has elicited memories of Bobby Plump. The local luminary is known for making the most famous shot in Indiana high school basketball history, a last-second pull-up jumper that lifted Milan (161 students) to a massive upset of Muncie Central (1,662 students) in the 1954 state final. The movie “Hoosiers” was inspired in part by Milan.Haliburton is in the middle of directing his own “Hoosiers”-like run while trying to lead a No. 4 seed to an NBA title for the first time in 56 years. It’s as if the movie’s star player, Jimmy Chitwood, is whispering his famous line, “I’ll make it,” in Haliburton’s ear before he drills yet another clutch shot. There have been four of them this postseason run — one in each round, to be exact. Four times the Pacers have trailed in the last five seconds of a game, and four times Haliburton has either tied or won the game with a big-time bucket.The latest example? A 21-foot jumper with 0.3 seconds left to silence the Oklahoma City Thunder in his NBA Finals debut.“I never lose belief in our group. I never lose belief (in myself),” Haliburton told ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt after Indiana’s one-point victory in Game 1. “If I lose belief in taking a shot at the end of a game, we’re probably screwed. So, I just gotta stick with it and stay confident and keep making plays.”Kevin Pritchard, the Pacers’ president of basketball operations, saw Haliburton’s star potential before the fifth-year guard had fully realized it. He didn’t wait for Haliburton to stun a sellout Thunder crowd to share his conviction publicly. Pritchard anointed Haliburton, whom he acquired from the Sacramento Kings in a February 2022 trade, as the next Indianapolis icon before he even played a game for the Pacers.“We feel like when we put the ball more in Tyrese’s hands that he can really blossom into something special at 21 years old,” Pritchard said hours before Haliburton’s franchise debut. “For me, when you get those kinds of guys, it’s like getting the Peytons and the Andrew Lucks.”When Pritchard uttered those words, knowing that it’s nearly impossible for any newcomer to live up to Manning’s impact in Indy, it felt like he did Haliburton, a promising yet largely unaccomplished player, a disservice. Even mentioning Haliburton with Luck, who was on his own Hall of Fame trajectory before injuries forced him into an early retirement, felt extremely premature. Manning led the Colts to two Super Bowl appearances and won it all in 2007. Luck led the Colts to the AFC Championship in just his third season.But Haliburton, for all of the weight he was under to flip the Pacers’ fortunes — which was multiplied by Pritchard’s bold vote of confidence — has already delivered. In only his third full season with the franchise, he’s led the Pacers to their first NBA Finals appearance in 25 years, where they’re tied 1-1 with the Thunder as the series shifts to Indiana for Wednesday’s Game 3. He’ll need to be better than he was during a blowout loss in Game 2, when scored 17 points but only five through the first three quarters, and his teammates trust him to bounce back.Their conviction is backed by the resilience they’ve witnessed all season, as Haliburton has adjusted to the increased scrutiny of stardom.“I’m just proud of the way he’s handled everything,” Myles Turner, the longest-tenured Pacer, said of Haliburton the night Indiana ousted the New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference finals. “It’s a lot of pressure being that main guy. … It’s all happened so fast, but he’s done a great job of composing himself and showing up when it matters the most.“So yeah, when you want to say he’s the Peyton Manning or Andrew Luck of the city, it makes sense.”
