To say the last 14 months of Tyrese Haliburton’s life has been a whirlwind would be an enormous understatement. The All-Star point guard won a gold medal with Team USA at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, then came back to the States to begin his fifth season in the NBA. His Indiana Pacers got off to a slow start, and when the calendar flipped to 2025, they had lost more games than they’d won. An in-season turnaround for the ages followed that, with the Pacers not only making the playoffs, but upsetting the number one seed Cleveland Cavaliers. In the next round, Haliburton hit one of the zaniest shots in basketball history in a Conference Finals victory over the Knicks, and then carried Indiana to Game 7 of the NBA Finals.
An awful Achilles injury put an unfortunate stain on the end of that series, adding another notable life event to Haliburton’s ledger. But since then, he’s not only gotten engaged to his fiance, Jade, but now he’s releasing his first ever signature shoe. The Hali 1 by Puma, a sneaker that the brand hails as a collision of “performance technology with premium craftsmanship,” is hitting shelves on September 26. Designed by the sneaker master Salehe Bembury, the first edition of the Hali 1 comes in an opal colorway, with Haliburton’s personal logo on the tongue and Bembury’s one-of-a-kind textures throughout the shoe.
Haliburton has already tested them out, rocking the kicks during the NBA Finals (in a yet to be released hibiscus colorway). Haliburton sat down with GQ to discuss how it all came together, being a Pacer working with a Knick fan like Bembury, and finding a pair of shoes’ fine line between looking sick and actually feeling good on your feet.
GQ: Having a signature shoe is a major accomplishment for any athlete. When you found out that it was actually going to happen, what kind of feeling did that put in your chest? Were you moving different for the rest of that day?
Tyrese Haliburton: I was really excited about the potential when I was a sneaker free agent last summer. It was in conversations. I had many meetings with different brands. That was surreal in the first place, that there were multiple brands willing to or talking about [signature shoes]. Puma just was the perfect partner.
We just aligned on so many different things, and that made me very, very excited for what we were going to be doing. And I still remember having to sit down with the whole Puma team and Salehe and having that conversation with those guys. It got me really juiced. Having the designer actually at the table—and having Salehe there for me to actually talk back and forth with for the brainstorming process—that was very exciting. I had a lot to do with the shoe, and I know a lot of guys usually feel they’re on the outside looking in on shoe design. I was, very much so, on the inside. I really enjoyed that.
Do you feel like getting a signature shoe elevates your status within the league?
I think so. There’s only so many guys that have a shoe. If they are worthy of that, that’s not for me to decide. I want everybody to be successful and enjoy that.
For me, it’s about making something that people actually want to buy and support and they want to wear. We hit it out of the park with the design. I think there’s a lot of fans excited—not just here in Indiana, but all over the country, all over the world—that are excited to get their hands on these shoes. That really excites me. I hope that I can continue to rock these and make people feel a sense of pride wearing them. That’s what basketball shoes have done for me growing up. You wanted to wear your favorite player’s [shoes].
I remember playing Boys & Girls Club basketball when I was eight. I had some AND1 sneakers that weren’t even attached to any player, and I still felt like I was the man.
For sure!
Looking back, they were pretty ugly. They were super chunky and had a weird gloss to them.
But when you’re a kid, they’re yours. You take pride in that. If there’s one thing that kids take pride in, it’s their basketball shoes.
You got to wear the shoes, in the hibiscus colorway, during the NBA Finals. What was that like? Coming out on the court for Game 1 of the Finals wearing your own shoes, that’s gotta be a holy shit moment.
For sure. It’s something that I’ll never forget. There were many things leading up to it. We were talking about when we were going to debut these, and as we were getting close to the Finals, it was like, Hey, that might be the time.