Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton (0) drives to the basket against Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Skip Bayless Credit: Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images
By Matt Yoder on

Skip Bayless has had his fair share of horrible takes throughout the years as a sports media provocateur, but his post about Tyrese Haliburton during Game 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals was one for the cold take history books.

During the first quarter of Game 7, Haliburton got off to a great start scoring a quick 9 points as the Thunder and Pacers were tied at 16-16. Given he’s been dealing with a serious calf strain that has limited him at times during the series, we were potentially looking at one of the all-time great NBA Finals performances.

But then the worst case scenario happened and Tyrese Haliburton went down with a non-contact injury that was eerily reminiscent of some of the major achilles tears that we have seen from other NBA superstars, most recently Jayson Tatum earlier this postseason.

But back to Bayless.

With Haliburton lighting it up from downtown, Bayless fired off a ridiculous take on X that the Pacers fabricated the injury news to take the pressure off of their star point guard and that the media were gullible enough to fall for it.

First, that’s an insane conspiracy theory to suggest that a team would fake injury news for one of its most important players during the NBA Finals. Second, it’s offensive to any athlete who has ever played through injury and risked further harm to their bodies.

But it was also the timing of the social media post. Just a mere five minutes later, Haliburton went down with what looked to be a devastating injury that could knock him out for a long time.

Sheepishly, Bayless took to X to say that “now” Haliburton looks hurt before offering some more contrition later in the evening.

As many former athletes posted on social media after the Tyrese Haliburton injury, one of the possible risks of playing through a calf strain is the threat that it poses to more serious injury to the achilles. And although it hasn’t been confirmed, it appears to be exactly what happened to Haliburton. It’s far from the first time that Skip Bayless has fired off a questionable social media post, but calling this merely a cold take doesn’t do justice to just how insensitive it was.

The Pacers point guard had to deal with a lot of nonsense in the media while playing through injury during and after Game 5 of the series. But after seeing him go down in these circumstances, maybe it will deliver a much needed message to the sports media that there are so many better things to do than criticize or question athletes who try to play through injury.

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