Siakam keeps growing with moment
Forward welcomes chance to be focal point of team in post-season
Presented with one chance to continue his ascent through the ranks of NBA players with more responsibility and a greater opportunity to lead his team, Pascal Siakam took it.
Presented with a second, he plans to keep doing more, to keep getting better.
With the Raptors eight games away from trying to defend the NBA title they won last year, Siakam is about to experience something he never has before. He will be the focal point for teammates and opponents alike in the cauldron of the NBA post-season. He will take a lot of the shots, get a lot of the attention, shoulder a lot of responsibility. There will be no Kawhi Leonard alongside him, with the weight of last year’s championship resting on his team.
Siakam will be a big deal in the biggest of circumstances.
“Obviously, the playoffs (are) more specific in terms of preparation and teams are going to be ready with different things,” Siakam said Friday, on a conference call arranged by the team. “I think I’m just going to take it a day at a time and obviously I know … the actions I’m involved in and how teams usually guard me.”
Siakam was given the opportunity this season to turn himself into Toronto’s prime offensive option after the departure of Kawhi Leonard.
He more than took advantage of that, averaging a career-high 23.5 points per game, on 46 per cent shooting, before the pandemic-imposed hiatus. He averaged six three-point field goal attempts per game, twice as many as he’d ever taken before, and shot 36 per cent from beyond the arc. He averaged a career high 35.5 minutes in 53 games, and had almost 19 fieldgoal attempts per game.
He was “the man” in so many ways. Not that anyone was surprised.
The ability to accept any opportunity given him, and thrive, has been a constant with Siakam since he arrived in Toronto in 2015 as the unheralded 27th pick in the draft out of New Mexico State, hardly a proven breeding ground of basketball greatness.
“The first time we started talking, he told me he didn’t want to be a role player and I was like ‘OK,’ ” Raptors president Masai Ujiri said. “Sometimes you don’t know what to make of that but with him you just believe in the player and with him there’s just that work ethic. He put so much time into the game, just like the high-level players. They just want to compete and do the best that they possibly can and Pascal competes.
“He’s one of those guys that wants to win. He puts winning first. And when you can figure that out at a young age and then, learning from the likes of Kyle Lowry and Kawhi, it magnifies that competitive edge, that fighting spirit, that mental toughness.” Siakam figures the four months he has been away from the game are the longest enforced absence he’s had from the sport since he took it up as a teenager but that picking things back up will come quickly.
It helps that he’s on a relatively veteran team that went through about 10 weeks of intense playoff action a year ago.
“We’ve been together and we kind of know exactly what each other’s strengths and weaknesses are, and coming in here I think is really important for us, being around each other,” he said.
Siakam has incredible selfconfidence and self-awareness, and a knowledge that both will help him succeed. He became an all-star on the strength of his work ethic and his willingness to work through mistakes.
His team trusts him, too, and that will become apparent when games start later this month.
“For my journey, and who I am as a person and as a basketball player, that’s something that always kind of excites me and will help me reach new heights ... I’m excited about the challenge, I love it,” he said. “I love going through the struggles — and obviously you want to win and be the best you can — but I really appreciate just being out there on the floor knowing that I struggle … and also knowing that I’m going to work really hard to rectify those mistakes and be the best player that I can be.
“So it’s part of the journey and, at the end of the day, I don’t see it as being difficult.”