TYRESE HALIBURTON HAD just hit the latest, greatest shot of his life against the New York Knicks in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals at Madison Square Garden. Congratulatory texts and calls were pouring in, as the Indiana Pacers celebrated their improbable comeback win.
But Haliburton had a problem. He’d left his phone charger back in Indiana, so he was about to miss all of them.
At this point in the postseason, very few people get through to Haliburton on his cell, much less get a response. But there’s one group chat that’s always active, and Haliburton wasn’t about to miss all the chatter on this night.
There are four people in the group: Haliburton, his longtime girlfriend Jade Jones, Indiana Fever superstar guard Caitlin Clark and her boyfriend, Connor McCaffery.
“We’re talking 24/7,” Haliburton told ESPN.
The best player on the Pacers, who are two wins from a championship after a 116-107 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday night at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, and the best player on the Fever, who also happens to be the brightest young star in the WNBA, are close friends.
They don’t just attend each other’s games and send congratulatory messages on social media. No, the reigning king and queen of Indiana basketball go on double dates with their significant others and talk constantly about basketball and the pressures of superstardom.
“The four of us hang out all the time,” Haliburton said. “She goes through a lot, as you know. There’s a lot of weight and eyes on her. Obviously there is on me as well, but hers are amplified times a million.”
Back inside the Garden, everyone wanted to talk to Haliburton after he’d hit a soul-crushing shot at the top of the key that bounced high off the rim before dropping through the net to tie the score at the end of regulation, then paid homage to Pacers legend Reggie Miller by re-creating his choke sign as he gutted the Knicks’ hopes.
At the same time, Clark was on the road in Atlanta. Inside her hotel room, she was so hyped by her friend’s shot, and the Pacers’ win in overtime, that she taped her own wild reaction to the game winner.
“I have a video on my phone I’m never going to show anybody,” Clark told reporters in Atlanta the next day. “I videotaped myself, like, the final play and I have my reaction in real time. It’s a pretty iconic video. Maybe one day everybody will see it, but no, not right now.”
Haliburton has seen the video. Of course she had sent it to the group text.
“She was going crazy!” Haliburton said.
“I cuss way too much in [the video],” Clark told ESPN, by way of explaining why she wouldn’t share that video publicly. She also said she has recorded herself watching almost all of Haliburton’s game-winning shots this season and is saving them for posterity — or maybe a project someday. The only one she didn’t get was the shot he hit to beat the Thunder in Game 1 of these Finals with 0.3 seconds remaining.
“I was on FaceTime with [teammates] Sophie Cunningham and Lexie Hull the whole game,” Clark said. “But at the end, I was like, ‘I got to get off FaceTime, I have to watch this. I can’t focus on both.'”
She considered taping herself reacting to whatever happened on the final possession.
“But then I was like, ‘Nah, no way. Four times in a row?'” Clark said. “So I didn’t take my phone out for OKC, but I was going crazy standing on the couch.”
A few hours later, Haliburton dropped Clark’s congratulatory post on X into their group chat.
“I was like, ‘Nice shot, Ty,'” Clark said. “How many times can you tell him? Good job.”
And so it is that the most powerful friendship in basketball lives in Indianapolis, where two 20-something stars are pushing themselves, and each other, to the top of the basketball universe.
“Ty and I would both tell you this is where we both hope to stay the rest of our careers,” Clark said. “People are like, ‘It’s a small market.’ But no, that’s what makes it fun. These people, this is what means the world to them. We haven’t hosted a Finals game in 25 years and I’ve never seen this type of excitement. People are lining up three hours before the game. I literally just got the chills thinking about it.
“And they’re the same for the Fever. I think it’s just like [Pacers coach] Rick [Carlisle] said, ‘In 49 other states it’s basketball, but here it’s just really different.’ I’m really fortunate to be able to play here and he’s the same.”
THE NIGHT AFTER Haliburton hit the shot in the Garden, Clark hit the group text again, this time to talk to Haliburton about something entirely different.
The Fever had pulled out a win in Atlanta behind 26 points from Natasha Howard, but for the first time since her sophomore year of college, Clark had failed to hit a 3-pointer. The Dream had thrown everything they had at her, basically forcing others to beat them.
They’d picked her up full court, face-guarded her and blitzed her in an effort to get the ball out of her hands early, and tire her out. And it had worked.
“Obviously we both want the ball in our hands in transition,” Clark said. “That’s really where we thrive, playing and pick-and-roll. And it gets hard when teams pick you up full court and deny 94 feet and don’t let you get the ball.
“So I was just leaning on him, ‘How can I get open? How do you manage maybe not having to roll every possession in transition? Or having a little give-and-take with yourself?’
“That’s something I’m trying to navigate. Obviously this is only Year 2 for me, and he’s in whatever, six or five, whatever it is for him. So he’s been through it. That’s just how we bounce ideas off of each other.”
Haliburton had advice, but said it was a constant struggle for him as well. The Thunder have aggressively tried to limit his drives by picking him up early and forcing him off his downhill line.
In Game 2 of the Finals he was able to drive just nine times, and the Pacers scored just two points on those plays. That 0.22 points per chance is his worst efficiency on drives in any playoff game of his career, according to GeniusIQ.
The way to combat that is to be more aggressive when the blitz or hedge comes. Look to score more. Don’t pass early in the possession and hope you get it back. Because against this Thunder team, you won’t.
In Game 3 on Wednesday, Clark was at center court to make sure her friend remembered their conversation.
“I was yelling at him the whole game like, ‘Shoot it! Shoot it! Shoot it! You’re open!’ And I love that unselfishness. That’s why they’re so good, because the entire team is unselfish in that way. But he could truly score every time.”
Clark’s presence was noted by everyone in the building. Not just for her star power, but for the good luck she has seemingly brought the Pacers this postseason. Indiana is 8-0 in home games that Clark has attended these playoffs.
“Trust me,” Haliburton said of the Clark effect. “I know it. And if I didn’t know it, everyone would make sure that I did.”
THEIR FRIENDSHIP BEGAN rather simply a few years ago.
McCaffery, Clark’s boyfriend, was a player development intern on the Pacers’ staff, and he had played against Haliburton in college — Haliburton at Iowa State, McCaffery at Iowa — but their friendship grew once McCaffery joined the Pacers.
“Me and Connor would talk all the time about [Clark’s] journey,” Haliburton said. “But I refused to cheer for Caitlin until she got out of college because I’m not cheering for Iowa.”
As the season went on and it was clear the Fever would have a good chance at landing Clark with the No. 1 pick, Haliburton finally relented.
Jones is from Iowa and had turned into a huge Clark fan as Clark rewrote the record books in college. Eventually Haliburton decided to shift allegiances. They all went out to dinner and have been good friends ever since.
Haliburton had attended Fever games since he was traded to Indiana in February 2022. The team was terrible that season, going just 5-31, and the vibe was completely different than the raucous crowds that now pack the arena.
“They wouldn’t even bring out half the bleachers,” Haliburton said. “I could just go up there after my workout and sit courtside. Kelsey [Mitchell] was kind of keeping the team together at the time. Then they got Aaliyah [Boston]. Now we’re excited, and then we got the No. 1 pick, Caitlin, and now the energy is crazy.
“But I’ve been coming to the games since I got there. I love basketball, especially the women’s game.”
However, once Clark got to Indiana, Haliburton couldn’t just show up at a Fever game anymore. He actually had to pay for season tickets, because those courtside seats were in high demand. The Fever’s average home attendance jumped from just over 4,000 per game in 2023 to more than 17,000 per game in 2024.
Haliburton said he has always paid attention to women’s basketball. His father, John, had coached a middle school girls basketball team, and he developed a respect for the game.
“He loves the game,” Clark said. “Even before I got here, he loved the Fever. He has a girls’ AAU basketball program. He’s a real advocate of the game.”
Before Clark came to town, though, Haliburton would text Kelly Krauskopf, who has served as both Pacers and Fever president, about women’s college players he thought might be good for the team.
“Ty knew all of the players,” Krauskopf told ESPN. “He would ask me before the WNBA draft, ‘Kelly, what do you think about this player? What do you think about that player? Do you think she’s going to be available?’ He was watching college women’s basketball.”
It reminded Krauskopf of an Indiana legend.
Larry Bird was the Pacers’ president of basketball operations when the Fever went to the 2009 WNBA Finals, and he watched nearly every game.
“Larry would always say to me, ‘I’m always here if you need anything,'” Krauskopf said. She took him up on that offer the night before Game 3 of the conference finals against the Detroit Shock.
“You know who the coach of that team was, right?” Krauskopf asked. “Bill Laimbeer. So obviously Bird wanted to beat the hell out of this guy.”
So Bird called Pacers CEO Rick Fuson and told him he wanted to buy up all the empty seats in the upper bowl and then give them away the next morning. Then Krauskopf asked Bird if he would talk to the team before the game.
“He gave quite the inspirational speech that morning,” she said. “It’s not suitable to repeat, but it was personal. And they felt it.”
THIS HAS BEEN the level of connection between the two franchises since the Fever launched in 2000. The franchises share resources and staff. Owner Herb Simon is the longest tenured NBA and WNBA owner. He’s also the last of the dual NBA-WNBA owners who launched the first 16 franchises from 1997 to 2000.
But the bond between Haliburton and Clark is unique. They learn from each other. They push each other. And because they play the same position, on teams that like to play in similar ways, they often find themselves working through a lot of the same issues.
“We’re very similar to the Pacers and how we want to play,” Fever coach Stephanie White told ESPN. “We want to play fast. We’ve got great depth, and so we can utilize our bench. We want to pressure 94 feet. We might not pull away from teams in the first, second and third quarter, but hopefully our depth allows us to do that in the fourth quarter.
“[With] Tyrese, they’re going to try to take him away. His ability to get others involved early is a great lesson for Caitlin. She’s been able to do what she wants to do for the most part because she’s a generational talent. But the great teams are going to take that strength away.”
Haliburton’s focus lately has been on staying aggressive, no matter what the defense does schematically to get him off the ball. He said he’s trying to learn from Clark, how she attacks no matter how much defenses throw at her.
Clark, in turn, watches Haliburton to see how to take better care of the ball. Haliburton led the NBA by far this season in assist-to-turnover ratio, at 5.6, whereas Clark led the WNBA in turnovers last season, despite breaking the franchise record for assists in a season.
“He’ll text me after a game when I have 10 turnovers and be like, ‘Nice triple-double,'” Clark said.
This is how they push each other. But also how they support each other.
“I mess with her about it,” Haliburton said. “But she’s going to do what she does. She’s going to keep growing. She makes the right play more times than not.
“Basketball is a genderless language. We both just love the game.”
Michelle Steele contributed to this report.
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