Raptors: Coach Casey sees bigger offensive role in future for Siakam
ATLANTA— The Raptors have great plans for Pascal Siakam in the future and the second-year forward brightens up when he starts talking about them.
Coach Dwane Casey envisions a day when Siakam will be a de facto offensive facilitator, a fast-break-leading ball handler who can get the team easy transition baskets by grabbing a rebound and taking off. “We want him and OG (Anunoby) both to handle the ball in transition, to bring the ball down, to be that point-four, point-three, bringing it down to trigger the offence,” Casey said before Wednesday night’s game against the Atlanta Hawks. “They both have excellent handles — in transition, and . . . once they get in the paint making decisions. Their skill set is really developed into that.”
Siakam, just 23 years old and only 100 games into his career, welcomes an expanded role. He knows his bread and butter — the skills that will force coaches to play him and general managers to pay him — are his hustle and athleticism, but more responsibility is never a bad thing.
“Yeah, I definitely like it,” he said Wednesday. “You feel involved. It helps you in every aspect of the game, knowing that you are a part of the offence. You might not score 20 points a game but you are a part of making us better, so that’s good for me.”
Any transformation of Siakam’s role is not going to manifest itself too fully this season, because the Raptors’ offence works efficiently now without it. Siakam or Anunoby might handle the ball a bit more in transition in the final 35 games of the season, but that ball-handling, facilitating skill set is to be more fully developed in summer workouts before it becomes a constant.
In the short term, Siakam needs to keep running the floor and finishing at the rim, as he does so well, but he also needs to be a more effective three-point shooter. Opponents are basically leaving him alone beyond the arc, happy to give up that shot in order to protect the paint and the mid-range area against DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry.
That’s worked more often than not — Siakam was shooting just 16.1 per cent from three-point distance going into Wednesday’s game — and is a troubling thing for the Raptors in their desire to be a legitimate threepoint shooting team.
“He’ll learn what to do. We’ve talked about things he can do if he doesn’t feel his shot,” Casey said. “I’m never going to tell a player who works on the three-point shot (not to take it) because I’ve seen it too many times: guys improve and get better and all of a sudden they’re three- point shooters. But there are things he can do offensively, whether it’s cutting, (dribbling into a hand-off), flare screening, whatever he wants to do other than shooting the ball.”
But shooting is what he’s got to do, and having the coach and his teammates still encouraging it gives Siakam a dose of confidence.
“When you don’t shoot the ball you are kind of a liability at that moment,” he said. “Sometimes you are open, you have to shoot it. If you don’t, it feels like it looks bad on the team.
“Obviously, it is something I have to get better at, and I work on it. It’s cool. My team is going to tell me to shoot. My teammates are going to tell me to shoot. I don’t hesitate. In my head, I don’t think about it. It’s basketball and I just go out and play.”