Tyrese Haliburton was named 'most overrated' by his peers. He's having the last laugh.

Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton was recently named 'most overrated' by his peers. Having led Indianapolis to the Eastern Conference Finals, he's having the last laugh.

Tyrese Haliburton arrived for a photoshoot in a Las Vegas casino last summer holding onto a pair of silver-tipped cowboy boots and a grudge.

Before the Indiana Pacers guard slipped into a denim outfit and in front of a magazine's camera, he rattled off all he was grateful for: consecutive appearances at the league's All-Star game, a contract that would pay him an average of about $52 million annually, and an invitation to play for the United States in the Paris Olympics.

Yet what Haliburton seemed especially thankful for was something else entirely — a perceived criticism that "everybody thinks my success in the first half of last season was a fluke," he said.

For a player who had gone from effectively being cut from his teenaged travel squad to an NBA All-Star in less than a decade while fueled by collecting slights, it might as well have been like being handed a gift.

"I'm at my best," Haliburton told me then, "when people are talking s--- about me."