Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily for June 18th, 2025.

I'm Dave Dufour here with Sam Amick and Zena Keda.

Coming up, full episode of Sam Amic, we catch up on the finals and the latest on the Desmond

Bain trade and Kevin Durant.

NBA Finals is about to swing back to Indianapolis, our senior national NBA writer,

and I call him our team insider here at the NBA Daily. Sam Amick is here with me and Zena Kata. Sam,

not good news for the Pacers, it seems. Breaking news right before we went to record, it does

appear as if Tyrese Halliburton has potentially been diagnosed with a calf strain or his calf

strain. He's going to have an MRI um what's the latest that you know

about his status heading into game six great to be with you guys appreciate you having me um yeah

so i walked out with tyrese briefly last night after his press conference described him in my column

as you know looked like an old man

who was on a Sunday stroll, very gingerly steps, you know, taking his time. He had said at

that time that he was 100% going to play. The Pacers today are downplaying, you know, the focus on

the MRI, you know, and essentially saying

it's standard protocol and that he's going to push to play. Now, as you guys saw in game five,

it's like on the one hand, it's admirable. And as he said afterwards, it's the finals. But

it's hard not to also think about the fact that, you know, a lot of folks,

myself included, you know, thought that T.J. McConnell probably should have had more time in that

second half and that that Tyrese just wasn't himself. So you wonder in game six, obviously,

assuming he does plays, is what kind of version are we going to get?

And what's really tough is, I mean, you hear Tyrese Halliburton say, like, if I'm walking, I'm playing.

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