Pascal Siakam: The Key to Toronto’s Contending Hopes
Through eight games, the Toronto Raptors are off to a terrific 7–1 start. They still haven’t lost with superstar Kawhi Leonard in the lineup. They look positively overwhelming offensively and have shown the capacity to shut down the other team when it becomes time to do so. We’ve heard this before but this time it feels very real: these Raptors feel different from before.
I’ll give you that Leonard and fellow star Kyle Lowry have been the two biggest reasons for the Raptors’ blistering start. The third most important factor in the 7–1 start? Well, if you ask me, that would be Pascal Siakam.
If you’ve been watching the games, you’ve seen it yourself. Siakam is a whirling dervish of energy. He’s quite possibly the most agile big in the NBA, which is saying something in a league that is trending towards smaller, quicker “big” men. One-minute Siakam will be guarding the other team’s power forward, the next he’ll seamlessly switch to the point guard, rendering the pick and roll useless as he smothers his smaller defender into a corner.
Siakam’s shot still isn’t perfect. His handle sometimes gets out of control. He’s not big enough to deal with some of the bigger NBA forwards the league has to offer. He’s not at the elite level of rebounders in the league. On paper, he should essentially be a solid rotation piece for a deep team.
In practice, his flaws don’t hold a candle to the energy he brings to almost any lineup he’s featured in. In 5-man lineups that have played at least 50 minutes together, Toronto’s most featured starting lineup to date (Siakam, Lowry, Leonard, Serge Ibaka, and Danny Green) generates 28 more points per possession than their opponents. Good for second in the NBA. If you allow the minutes restriction to go to 30 minutes of shared court time, that same lineup with Jonas Valanciunas replacing Ibaka places second with a +38.8 and the original lineup still comes in fourth.
While plus minus stats have their flaws, it’s worth noting that Siakam is almost always a plus player. He has only one 2-man unit in the negatives, with CJ Miles who has had a brutal start to the season, and no 3-man units are in the red.
Those are the two lineups in which Siakam features the most. Both have been running their opponents out of the gym with a blistering pace. A lot of that tempo is set from Siakam who has become something of an event whenever he grabs a defensive rebound. Most big men will usually look for their guard to start the offense. Not Siakam. As soon as Siakam grabs the ball, he’s off to the races. Sometimes that leads to an unfortunate turnover but more often, it leads to an easy fast break finish. Since he’s grabbing more than 20% of the available defensive rebounds when he’s on the court, it’s something that Raptors fans are becoming accustomed to seeing.
On the defensive end, we’ve seen the Raptors become a very hungry team. They have gotten very good at creating opportunities to come up with steals in the half-court. A major reason that Toronto has had a lot of success in that area is the ability to throw Siakam and Leonard on the wings and let them roam. Siakam has quick hands and feet and has shown an impressive ability at reading the play.
Watching Siakam on the defensive end, you start to get tired for him. He’s always in motion and in his opponents’ comfort zone. You can tell that star players get annoyed at the amount of energy Siakam exerts on any given play. Siakam hasn’t yet transformed into an elite defender but he isn’t too far behind. I can think of very few plays this season where Siakam has been the cause of a defensive breakdown and he’s helped save more than a few on his own. He did get dunked on savagely by Kelly Oubrae, but that wasn’t Siakam’s fault.
Successful NBA teams need players who will do the dirty work without much of the recognition. That is exactly the type of player has thrived on being. Nobody hustles more than he does. Siakam isn’t the most athletic player in the NBA, he’s probably not even in the top 50 and yet, when he’s not in a spot where he could get a defensive board, he’s the first one to get to the other end of the court. I can think of dozens of buckets that he’s scored simply by running hard and having good hands. If there’s a loose ball near him, it’s almost a guarantee Siakam is getting a hand on it. He’s become the type of player that you can’t win without. His impact goes beyond the box score and advanced statistics. He’s Mr. Intangibles.
We’re starting to hear a lot of comparisons to Draymond Green but Siakam feels different. He’s not the elite defender that Green has become. He also doesn’t have Green’s physical strength that comes from a lot more girth on the body. What Siakam shares with Green is the willingness and ability to create in transition and the half-court from the forward position. Siakam has become very comfortable with the ball in his hands and his decision-making is starting to catch up to that comfort.
Throwing in 2.3 assists per game for a big man is pretty good. If you get the chance to watch Siakam on the court, you would know that this figure could easily be much higher. It seems as though his teammates are determined to take away his assists whenever possible. There have already been a handful of times this season where Siakam fed Valanciunas for a bunny that the latter messed up and had to cash in on an offensive rebound. Often, Siakam has located Ibaka wide open for threes that the Congolese big man has failed to cash in. If you watch the way Siakam is finding his teammates, you’ll see that he’s developing into quite the passer.
That’s where Siakam’s importance really comes through. Lowry is the team’s primary facilitator and carries the biggest burden in that respect. When DeMar DeRozan was a Raptor, he happily filled in as the secondary playmaker, a role that’s helped him thrive as the San Antonio Spurs’ de facto point guard this season. Leonard isn’t unable to provide for his teammates but he isn’t doing so at the level DeRozan ever could. That might have left a hole in the team’s ability to generate easy buckets.
Siakam’s rise as a playmaker, especially in transition, has made the transition much easier. He’s almost always making the correct reads on offense and moving the ball to the correct location. He’s actively looking to involve his teammates in the action and making it a lot harder for defenses to clamp down on the ball without fear of being beaten by good ball movement.
If the Raptors want any hope of competing with the Golden State Warriors, and that’s a tall task considering the way Steph Curry has started out the season (oh and Klay Thompson casually breaking the three pointers in a game record), they’re going to need Siakam to be at his best. While he may not be Draymond Green, so far Siakam has done a very nice job imitating his role. Why not aspire to knock off his supposed spiritual predecessor on the game’s biggest stage?
