Tyrese Haliburton (hamstring) out for Sacramento, but could return on road trip

SACRAMENTO -- Pacers All-Star Tyrese Haliburton's upgrade to questionable on the injury report Wednesday is a sign of progress, Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said after shootaround, but Haliburton will still be out for Thursday's 10 p.m. game against the Kings.

"He's not going to play tonight," Carlisle said. "His progress is steady. There's no set timetable. He was upgraded to questionable yesterday because he's getting better, so that's good news. But there's no specific game that we're targeting."

Haiburton has been out since slipping into a split in the second quarter of the Pacers' win over Boston on Jan. 18. When the MRI the next day showed a Grade 1 left hamstring strain, league sources said that he'd be re-evaluated after two weeks at the end of the six-game, 10-day road trip the Pacers are in the midst of.

With games against the Blazers in Portland on Friday night and Suns in Phoenix on Sunday, there is now a chance Haliburton gets back on the floor before the Pacers return to Indianapolis to play the Nuggets on Tuesday.

"I'm ahead of schedule," Haliburton said. "Where I want to be. Whenever is the right time for me and the medical staff agrees, I'll be back."

Though the Pacers publicly indicated that Haliburton wouldn't be available until after the road trip, he said there was internal hope the entire time that he could return earlier. He credited the Pacers' medical staff, which he called the best in the league, for getting him to the point that returning during the road trip is realistic.

"In that moment, there's a million thoughts that run through your mind," Haliburton said. "But after we got the diagnosis in the morning, our medical staff had a pretty good idea of where I'd be. I'm right on schedule in terms of what we thought internally. Externally, it's easy to just say it's going to be I'd be back after the road trip, but we thought there was opportunity to be back on this road trip. ... We re-evaluate every day."

Haliburton leads the Pacers with 23.6 points per game and leads the NBA with 12.5 assists per game. He is the leading vote getter among Eastern Conference guards to start the All-Star game on Feb. 18. Not including the win over the Celtics, the Pacers are 2-2 in his absence since the injury, beating Washington and Atlanta but losing to Denver and Utah in their last two games.