THESE GUYS ARE GOOD
What’s not to like about the Raptors, a respectful, incredibly professional bunch?
TORONTO — Oh dear, Warriors fans. You have your work cut out for you in this series.
You need to build up a headful of steaming antipathy. Your job is to dislike your team’s opponent. To feel disdain, superiority. To be able to scoff or roll your eyes.
And, let’s be honest. You’ve had it easy for most of this Warriors championship run. There was always LeBron James and his dysfunctional band of Cavaliers waiting in the NBA Finals. Along the way, the other primary obstacle has been James Harden’s irritating Rockets.
But now: Just like your team, you’re facing a difficult matchup.
Because this Raptors team is pretty darn likable. Incredibly professional. Full of compliments and respect for the Warriors and their achievements.
Asked Saturday about the Warriors’ swaggering confidence, Raptors guard Kyle Lowry nodded.
“They got rings,” he said. “They can be confident.”
Asked about Draymond Green proclaiming himself the best defender in the world, another supreme defender — Kawhi Leonard — shrugged.
“I think he should feel that way about himself,” Leonard said. “You have to come into these games confident and know what you can do on the floor.”
That’s Leonard, who is as calm and understated as any superstar can be. He is the antiLeBron, with no chest-pounding or flexing, no crowning himself king.
“If you were teaching your kid, you would tell him this is how you play sports,” Raptors coach Nick Nurse said of Leonard. “Don’t get too high, don’t get too low, compete to win, care about winning, don’t let your emotions get the best of you.”
Somehow this has become a bad thing, a boring thing. It’s really not.
The Raptors also have Marc Gasol, who arrived from Memphis in February. He’s a guy who has spent his free time away from the NBA pulling dead or dying refugees out of the sea. He’s one of several multilingual players on the team that plays in this extremely diverse city, along with Serge Ibaka, who conducts interviews in four languages.
The Raptors have Lowry, Olympic teammate of four of the Warriors and foundation of this Raptors team, who grew up in Philadelphia but has embraced Toronto as “home.” There’s Fred VanVleet, who helped mid-major Wichita State to the Final Four as a freshman.
A breakout star in Game 1
And then there’s Pascal Siakam. The breakout star of Game 1, who scored 32 points and tortured Draymond Green, is the best story in the NBA. That’s all.
“He’s become a guy,” Green said after Game 1, while lamenting the job he did on Siakam defensively.
No higher praise in the NBA. A guy.
A guy who didn’t begin playing organized basketball until he was nearly 18. A guy who was spotted at the camp of fellow Cameroonian Luc Mbah a
Moute, a camp he attended mostly as a lark. His older brothers had found a way to play college ball in the states, but Siakam rejected the sport until he was 17.
Siakam played a second year at Mbah a Moute’s camp and was given an invitation to play with Basketball Without Borders, where Raptors president Masai Ujiri saw him. Ujiri won’t even pretend he could project what Siakam would become.
“No,” Ujiri said. “We all want to act like we know everything, but we don’t. … He’s been an unbelievable revelation for us.”
Siakam’s journey took him 7,600 miles, first to a basketball academy in Texas and then to New Mexico State, where he redshirted his first year and then played two seasons. During his second year, his beloved father was killed in a car crash, but Siakam couldn’t return home to Cameroon because of visa issues.
He was drafted by the Raptors with the 27th pick in 2016. His started the season opener — playing in the first NBA game he had attended. But he spent much of that season bouncing down to the Raptors D-League affiliate; he helped them win a D-League championship.
He became a full-time starter last fall, with the overhaul of the Raptors roster following the trade for Leonard. And then came the playoffs. People began to learn his story and on Thursday night he became “a guy.”
“It just proves that if you put the work in, man,” said Siakam, who also conducts interviews in French. “It’s something that is so cliché most of the time, but that’s the story of my life.”
‘A young Draymond’
Warriors coach Steve Kerr likened Siakam to “a young Draymond” and it’s true that many of the same adjectives used to describe Siakam are what we say about Green: motor, pace, work-rate. But Siakam also gets: slippery, speedy, wingspan. He’s got a dominating skill set that is just beginning to be polished.
“It’s a different type of respect when you’re talking about a guy who really got it out of the mud,” Green said. “You come into this league and there’s really no space for you — I mean, you can be out in a year, two years, four years. To gain that respect and become one of those guys, it’s special.
“Siakam has done that. I can’t say I foresaw that. I had no clue he would be this guy this year.”
Before every game, Siakam writes “RIP Dad” and the date of his father’s death on his shoes. It is an homage to the father who, 6,000 miles away from where Siakam finds himself, guided his youngest son to make something special of himself.
“Every night I go out there, I have a bigger purpose,” Siakam said. “I’m playing for something bigger than myself.”
You going to dislike these guys, Warriors fans? That’s a tough task.
Thank goodness for Drake.
Ann Killion is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist.