By Matthew Roberson

Copyright gq

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.

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.
I had to hide them! I could only wear them in the [training] facility. I started wearing them for practice. Our equipment guy would come out and switch my shoes before the public came in, because in the Finals your practices are public. In the private sessions, I could wear them, but when I wasn’t private, I had to be wearing other shoes. I’m not really on social media during the playoffs, so when we debuted them through social media, I didn’t really get to see the fan reaction. I was asking my girl and my people to fill me in on what people were saying.
I hit a game winner in Game 1, the first game I wore them. Then I get back on social media, just for the night, to see the reaction. It was storybook, the way we debuted them, and is something I’ll never forget.
The video you posted on Instagram, with the “It’s gotta be the shoes” caption, I was looking at the comments. There were hella celebrities and people from around the league just leaving fire emojis and eyes emojis.
It worked out so well. All I could think going into the game was, it’s your first game in your shoes. You got to have a good game, right?
Can’t brick it.
To be honest, I didn’t really play that well in that game. I just ended up hitting the game winner. That kind of fixed it. The way I was playing that game, I would’ve been disappointed if that was the way I debuted my sneakers. But, I literally couldn’t have wrote it any better.
But that hibiscus colorway, those aren’t out yet, right?
No, they’re not. The opal pair will be the first pair that we publicly release, but the hibiscus will be out shortly after.
The idea of doing a pink shoe was sampled first, but also there’s a story behind it as well. My first pair of basketball shoes that I wore in fourth grade were pink. I was known around the area as the kid with the pink shoes. A cool thing we’re also doing, the boxes of all the shoes are going to be pink. When the opals come out, when the hibiscus pair comes out, when other pairs come out in the future, they’re all coming out in a pink box. That’s a very exciting little nuance of the shoe I’m excited about.
You mentioned being at the table with Salehe. Generally speaking, how involved were you in the design? I can’t imagine you’re sitting down and drawing them, right?
[laughing] I don’t have that artistic ability. When I had my first-ever meeting with Puma, Salehe had a working idea of what he wanted the shoe to look like, and they actually brought a 3D print of the shoe to look at. I got to see it. Right away, there were parts that I really liked and parts that I didn’t like. I would just say, “Hey, I think we should get rid of this. I’d like if we kept this. Move that. Do this.” Me and Salehe just went back and forth talking about it at the table. Then by the time that I had signed, all the little things that I had said and that we brainstormed at a dinner table, he showed me. I was like, “That’s it! That’s what I want to see.”
From there, color ideation and all that stuff was really just us talking through. Then me getting a lot of samples and being able to pick which ones were my favorites amongst them, I would say I was pretty involved in that. I had a decent amount to do.
There’s a difference between looking at it, and then feeling the material and knowing what would work for you as a basketball player, right?
For sure. Feeling a 3D print, you can’t really tell the weight or anything. The first time I got to see the shoes and actually wear them in a test was December or January. We had some secret gym that Puma set up where I got to try the shoes and work out in them while I was in Boston. I loved the feel, loved the traction. There were only a couple little notes that I had on some feel things, but the first pair that I actually ever wore on my feet was the hibiscus colorway. They laid out a bunch, and hibiscus colorway is just the color I picked up.
That had a lot to do with me wearing the hibiscus in the Finals as well. That was the pair that really opened my eyes and I picked up first. Once I wore them, it was pretty much set in stone. These feel really good. A couple little tweaks, we made those—and it wasn’t even that many, really—and we got it right to where we wanted them.
As a basketball player, what are the things you prioritize in a shoe?
When you first see them, you want them to look cool, right? I think the style, the look, the colors matter. If you do the wrong color, colors sometimes can make or break a shoe, especially your first time seeing it. When we wanted to do the hibiscus colorway, I was like, “That’s going to be people’s first viewing point of it,” and that’s what sticks with people.
But obviously, wearing them, I want them to be light. I want to have good traction. I typically wear low-top sneakers. These are, I would say, between a low and mid-top. All those boxes were checked when I needed them to. It’s interesting because I talk to guys [in the NBA] about that all the time. What are you looking for in a shoe? Every guy says the same thing. I want to look cool, and I want to be light. That’s kind of the base around it. Then everything else from there, I feel it’s really up to your preference. These are probably the best traction I’ve ever had on a basketball sneaker before. That’s very exciting for me because I’m moving around, making a lot of cuts, things like that. There’s a lot of things that I feel are up to personal preference, but I feel we ended up getting them right where I wanted them.
Growing up, Puma wasn’t a huge force in the basketball shoe world, and now you are part of that generation that’s causing it to happen. Was that part of the reason for partnering with them, being on the forefront?
I think that was important. We just aligned on so many things. I feel like I’m—and especially when I signed—still up and coming in this league. I still have a lot to prove. I feel like Puma can relate to that. I feel like that is something that excited them as well. I feel like that’s why I excited them as a young player being in this league and having success.
From a partner perspective, Puma has been everything that I could dream of. It’s been so amazing. It’s been such a great partnership for me. Our vision just aligned on so many different things that it made the decision pretty easy.
You’ve mentioned Salehe a couple times. He’s famously a New York guy. Was there any Pacers-Knicks trash talk between you guys?
I think there always will be! That’s honestly helped establish our friendship, that we were able to have some banter. He came to a playoff game in all Knicks gear, and he’s still showing love, but he’s obviously supporting his team, which I think is cool. I think being a fan of your team is really cool. The fact that we can talk shit and still be love after that, I think that is very important.
That made me excited to work with him because last year we beat the Knicks, so he saw me kind of come out on the big stage. I think that excited him, the idea of his shoe now being put on me to ultimately wear in the Garden one day. He’s been amazing to work with. Getting to learn and see his artistic vision? He has such a brilliant mind, and he’s done so many different cool things in the sneaker space. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. A lot of people are going to really like these shoes, and that’s something that really gets me going.
After I hit the game winner, he was one of the first people I texted. After we won the series, one of the first people I texted. He was excited for me, and obviously disappointed for his team.
I didn’t fully understand the Knicks-Pacers rivalry until these last two years. They really hate your ass, Tyrese!
I didn’t really understand until I was immersed in it. And through [the first] two games [in New York] and hearing the fans, I was like, okay! We’ve kind of reignited it, which I think is good for the sport.