Tyrese Haliburton is out at least two weeks with a hamstring strain, and Andrew Nembhard runs Indiana

Four games into his return from the torn Achilles that cost him all of last season, Tyrese Haliburton is back on the injury report, this time with a strained left hamstring. Pacers coach Rick Carlisle called the strain mild before Wednesday's game against Philadelphia and said he expects Haliburton to miss at least two weeks, adding that he did not think it realistic for him to play before then, according to Jamal Collier's reporting for ESPN, and ESPN's recap of the 114-109 loss to the 76ers repeated the same timeline. Haliburton had told reporters he felt a little beat up after Monday's game in Milwaukee, Collier wrote, and the Pacers brought in a hamstring specialist to consult before Wednesday's game. No firmer return date has been given, and Indiana lists him as week to week.

For a fantasy manager the decision on Haliburton himself is simple, because two weeks is a stretch you hold a top-20 player through, and the useful question is who runs the offense while he is gone. Wednesday answered it plainly. Andrew Nembhard, back from a neck problem that kept him out of Monday's game, played 35 minutes and finished with 18 points and 14 assists, while the Pacers' third point guard, T.J. McConnell, still has not played this season because of his own hamstring strain.

What the injury costs Haliburton on our boards

Haliburton had started the season exactly as his managers hoped, with 21.8 points, 9.5 assists and 2.5 threes a night on 52 percent shooting in 33 minutes over his four games, and nothing about that rate has changed in our projection. What has changed is the count of games: our projections now expect him to miss about seven more, which takes his projected total from 64 games to 60. That is enough to move him from 12th to 16th on our points board under ESPN's standard scoring and from 7th to 11th on our 9-cat board, which puts him back roughly where the analysts' consensus had him all along, 18th on points and 11th in categories.

The risk worth naming is the history rather than this strain. In January 2024 a left hamstring strain cost him 10 of 11 games and returned in that spring's playoffs, as Collier noted, and a first estimate of two weeks for a hamstring is a floor more often than a forecast. Managers in leagues with an open injured-list slot should use it, and nobody should be trading him at a discount on the strength of a two-week absence.

Andrew Nembhard is the start

Nembhard was already starting beside Haliburton, so this is not a new role so much as a larger version of the one he had. His 14 assists on Wednesday were his most of the season by five, after nine, five and three in his first three games, and he got to the line eight times, making seven. The shooting was poor at 5 of 16, and the four turnovers will cost something in points leagues, but a guard handling the ball for 35 minutes with no Haliburton beside him is producing assists and free throws even on a cold night.

Our projection now has Nembhard at 32.2 minutes with 15.3 points and 6.8 assists, which works out to 31.9 fantasy points a game under ESPN's standard scoring and lifted him from 103rd to 93rd on our points board after Wednesday, and from 129th to 122nd on our 9-cat board. The analysts' consensus has him 117th on points and 139th in categories, so our numbers were already higher on him than the market before the injury. He is a start in any points league while Haliburton is out and a reasonable add in 12-team category leagues for assists and free-throw percentage, with the caveat that his projection is a full-season figure and the extra assists belong to the next two weeks rather than the whole of it.

The rest of the backcourt

Quenton Jackson played 14 minutes on Wednesday with six assists and two points, and over five games he is averaging 18.4 minutes, which is not enough to make him useful outside very deep leagues. McConnell, who sat out the preseason and has not appeared this season, is the player whose return would cut into Nembhard's extra work, and RotoBaller reported on Monday, citing Scott Agness of Fieldhouse Files, that he remained out. Our projections have him back in early November, which would make him a deep-league pickup at most and a reason not to overpay for Nembhard in a trade.

We wrote about Haliburton's return and where to draft him in mid-October, when our projection gave him 61 games, so this injury has taken his total roughly back to where we expected it to be before a healthy first week raised it.

Every player in this story is on the fantasy basketball rankings and the 2026-27 projections, and the NBA depth charts show where each one stands in his team’s rotation tonight.