Future bright for Siakam
ATLANTA — The Raptors have great plans for Pascal Siakam and the second-year forward brightens up when he starts talking about the future.
Coach Dwane Casey envisions a day when Siakam will be a de facto offensive facilitator, a fastbreak 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 here. “They both have excellent handles in transition, and also, too, once they get in the paint making decisions. Their skillset 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 morning before the Raptors faced the Atlanta Hawks. (Go to therecord.com for full game results.) “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. He, or Anunoby, might handle the ball a bit more in transition in the final 35 games of the season. But that ball-handling, facilitating skillset 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 midrange area against DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry, Toronto’s two most effective scorers.
That’s worked more often than not — Siakam was shooting just 16.1 per cent from three-point distance going into Wednesday’s game — but is a troubling factor for the Raptors who want to be a legitimate three-point team.
“When you don’t shoot the ball you are kind of a liability at that moment,” Siakam 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.”