All Giannis Antetokounmpo needed to prevent Tyrese Haliburton’s dad from taunting him on the court was Good Karma Brands CEO Craig Karmazin.
Last week, after Tyrese Haliburton hit a game-winner in overtime for the Indiana Pacers to end the Milwaukee Bucks season, his dad, John Haliburton was seen on the court, nose-to-nose with Antetokounmpo during a heated exchange. Turns out Antetokounmpo wasn’t the only person to feel the wrath of Haliburton’s dad during the series. Karmazin joined ESPN Milwaukee to detail his recent encounter with Mr. Haliburton.
Craig broke up a fight between Tyrese Haliburton’s Dad and a #Bucks fan 😳👀 pic.twitter.com/UjJBLdJaSS
— ESPN Milwaukee (@ESPNMilwaukee) May 5, 2025
“Tyrese’s dad, he was getting into a fight after Game 3 with a fan. I got in between it,” Karmazin said. “One of our fans was being pretty obnoxious and talking smack to him. He was talking smack and saying, ‘You may beat us in Game 4, but I guarantee you, you won’t win a game in Indiana, so we’re gonna win this series.’ And there were expletives going back and forth between a fan.”
Good Karma Brands, which Karmazin founded in 1997, currently owns 12 radio stations, including eight ESPN Radio affiliates, ESPN Milwaukee being one of them.
“I was kind of worried about where it was gonna go and about him posting something on social media that the fans were harassing him or any of that,” Karmazin continued. “So I kind of grabbed him by the shoulders from behind and I said, ‘Hey, we were in Indianapolis for the All-Star Game with Tyrese and Woj and what he is as a player, as a person, you should just be so proud of him, the way he carries himself and the way he leads this franchise…he just does it all the right way.’ And I was just there trying to defuse the whole situation, but I clearly was not able to defuse him, it didn’t carry over long-term.”
John Haliburton has not addressed the Game 3 incident with a Bucks fan, but he has apologized for the incident with Antetokounmpo, claiming he only yelled “Yayy! Yayy!” and exchanged ‘I love yous’ with the Bucks superstar. Immediately after the incident, however, Antetokounmpo claimed Haliburton’s dad shouted expletives while taunting him. This is what happens when you don’t have Craig Karmazin there to play mediator.
