First Game Shows How Haliburton Fits On Team USA

Source: Ethan Miller / Getty

The Team USA men’s basketball team played their first exhibition game against Canada on Wednesday night, getting the 86-72 win.

There were plenty of highlights to go around for the USA once they shook off a slow start, which is to be expected when you have a team as loaded as this one. Something that did stand out however, was the play of Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton. While Haliburton only contributed 2 points, he led the team with 6 assists, and had 4 rebounds and 4 steals. His passing prowess was on full display, and showed exactly why Haliburton is on the roster to begin with.

For the Pacers, Haliburton sometimes must go against his pass-first nature and be more aggressive in finding his shot. On Team USA, that’s not an issue. Every player on the roster can go and get their own. That means Haliburton can play the more natural role of facilitator, which he does masterfully.

His teammates are even calling him the best in the East:

During the Thursday edition of The Ride With JMV, Evan Sidery of Forbes Sports joined the show, and spoke about how Haliburton fits on Team USA’s roster.

“He really does fit well into that role where, they really just need a pure facilitating point guard on that team. When you see all the talent on this team, you have Lebron, Steph Curry, Devin Booker, Joel Embiid, you can go on and on. There’s potentially twelve future Hall of Famers on this roster, and you just need a guy to go in there, facilitate, play hard defense, make shots easy for everybody else, and that’s what Tyrese Haliburton did last night in the first exhibition game.”

Listen to JMV’s full conversation with Evan Sidery and more down below, and tune into The Ride With JMV weekdays from 3-6pm on 93.5/107.5 The Fan!

The post First Game Shows How Haliburton Fits On Team USA appeared first on 93.5 / 107.5 The Fan .