Columnist image

TSN Raptors Reporter

| Archive

TORONTO – Over the coming days, a select panel of media members will sit down individually and fill out their ballots for the NBA’s various end-of-season awards.

They have until Monday – the day after the regular season wraps – to submit their picks, and given how close the race is for most of this year’s hardware, they’ll have their work cut out for them. The vote for All-NBA seems especially challenging. With so much star talent in the league, how do you narrow your selection down to 15 players across three teams?

They’ll consider a bunch of different things. They’ll look at the numbers, both standard and advanced. Many will factor in a player’s impact and contribution to team success. The most dedicated voters might even watch film on the players they’re less familiar with.

Whether they care to admit it or not, narrative can also sway a vote in either direction, too. It’s only natural. That’s just human nature, and these are sportswriters and broadcasters casting the votes, after all. We’re suckers for a compelling story.

So, what’s Pascal Siakam’s story?

It’s an all-timer, and one that most people are well versed in by now. He didn’t start playing organized basketball until he was 17, and had to overcome personal and professional adversity along his unlikely journey from Cameroon to the pros. In just a few years, he went from the 27th-overall pick to the league’s Most Improved Player and an NBA champion, and then to a maximum salary player and first-time all-star.

You can bet that was on the voters’ minds when they selected him to the All-NBA second team in 2019-20. It was hard to imagine Siakam’s story getting any better than that. But if there’s one thing people love more than a success story, it’s a redemption arc.

It’s not just that the Raptors forward is enjoying the best season of his six-year career, deserving of All-NBA honours on merit alone; he’s done it on the heels of his absolute lowest moments as a professional.

From a basketball standpoint, most of the criticism he faced during a very tough 15-month stretch was fair. There were extenuating circumstances that explained his poor performance in the bubble, his inconsistent 2020-21 campaign, and his slow start to this season, following his return from off-season shoulder surgery. However, this is a results-oriented business and, to his own admission, his play took a big step back.

What wasn’t fair, and should never be tolerated, were the personal attacks he received from fans on social media, or the people who were so willing to write him off for his struggles, despite his noted work ethic and the fact that he was 27 and just entering his prime years.

Siakam has been open and honest about the challenges he faced over that time, both on and off the court, culminating in the long recovery from his first-ever surgery this past summer. That’s what makes everything he’s accomplished this season so remarkable. It’s a testament to his resolve and the work that he’s put in to not only get back to his pre-pandemic form, but to exceed it.

The story is great, but Siakam’s All-NBA candidacy checks off the other boxes, as well.

Siakam, who turned 28 last week, is one of five NBA players averaging at least 22 points, eight rebounds and five assists. The other four are perennial MVP candidates: LeBron James, Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Luka Doncic. With three games left to play, he’s on pace to become the first player in franchise history to put up those numbers over the course of a full season. 

He’s become an all-around force, the kind of player that contributes at a high level in every facet of the game. Take something away from him and he’ll beat you with something else, as we saw last week. Coming off his fourth career 40-point game in a win over Boston, Timberwolves head coach and former Raptors assistant Chris Finch sent multiple defenders at him in an attempt to get the ball out of his hands. He responded by dishing out a personal-best 13 assists and recording his second career triple-double, as his team went on to defeat Minnesota by 23 points. That’s the mark of a true superstar.

His efficiency is higher than it’s been since he was a low-usage player earlier in his career. He’s crashing the glass hard every night, which has been crucial for a team without a traditional centre on the roster. His playmaking has reached another level this season, and he’s making reads that you don’t often see from players his size. His energy and effort on the defensive end rarely wanes, which is impressive considering his offensive workload and the fact that he leads the league in minutes.

“You can’t get tired,” Siakam said of being an elite two-way player. “You’ve gotta guard players. It’s not like I can be out there and just not guard anybody. So you’ve gotta guard, you’ve gotta also have the ball and try to make plays. But I enjoy it, man. It’s fun. I’d rather do that than sit in the corner. It’s fun and I think the more I get in this position the better I’m gonna get.”

He had his full arsenal on display as the Raptors clinched a top-six seed and guaranteed playoff spot in Tuesday’s win over Atlanta. Early in the first quarter, he attacked Clint Capela on a switch, spun around the Hawks centre and softly floated the ball over him. Then, he took De’Andre Hunter off the dribble and finished with his left hand. In the third quarter, he drove into the body of Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot, finished through the contact and off of one leg, while drawing the foul. When Atlanta finally sent help, he made them pay with the pass. With one minute to go, Siakam got into the lane, sucked in all five Hawks defenders and kicked the ball out to Fred VanVleet, who hit the dagger.

“He was great,” head coach Nick Nurse said of Siakam, who finished with 31 points, 13 rebounds and six assists. “The biggest thing was, as you guys have seen, probably his go-to move over the years is to get his body on you and spin off you, and he wasn’t really using it. He was staying faced up as long as he could, and I think that just gives him great vision on what’s in front of him or what’s coming at him. I like that growth and I like that confidence.”

There were moments in that game where Hawks defenders were simply guessing what he was going to do or which direction he was going to go in, and hoping that they were right. That’s what guarding Siakam has been like for most teams this season. It feels like it’s been months since he had a bad game.

At 46-33, the fifth-place Raptors have exceeded even the most optimistic of expectations, and while there’s plenty of credit to go around, Siakam’s resurgence is at the top of that list. They’ve outscored opponents by 252 points with him on the floor, and they’ve been outscored by 60 points with him off it.

In terms of how much he’s carried their otherwise lacklustre half-court offence, consider this: the Raptors score 114.1 points per 100 possessions when he’s out there, which would be tied with Milwaukee for the fifth-best offence in the NBA. When he’s on the bench, they score 105.7 points per 100 possessions, which would rank 27th between Houston and Detroit.

He’s silencing his doubters one critique at a time. People wondered whether he could be the focal point of an efficient offence, and he’s done that. They wondered if he could get his three-point percentage back around league average after it dipped well below last season; he’s done that. They said he couldn’t be trusted in clutch situations, but he’s made big plays in the fourth quarter of important games. They questioned his leadership after he was benched on a couple occasions last year, but his young teammates have all raved about his impact and influence.

“He really works, he really gets to it, he really sets the tone on what it means to be a pro, be a terrific player,” Gary Trent Jr. said last week. “And that's why you see what he does, how he does it. He comes in, he's working every single day, he’s showing and proving and he's a great talent. I'm glad he’s on our team.”

A late start to the season hurt his chances of joining VanVleet at the All-Star Game in February; he just missed the cut. But missing 11 of the first 13 games isn’t likely to matter now that he’s played in 66 of 68 since and is averaging a league-high 38 minutes per contest.

There’s precedent for players getting left out of the All-Star Game and still selected to an All-NBA team later in the same season. It’s happened more often than you might think. There’s been 45 instances of it in league history, most recently with Jimmy Butler last season and Rudy Gobert in 2016-17 and then again in 2018-19.

Siakam deserves to join that group; it’s just a question of how the votes will shake out. All-NBA sure feels outdated in the modern era, requiring voters to select two guards, two forwards and one centre for each team. The ballot does allow for some flexibility in terms of position eligibility, though.

The irony for Siakam, a position-less player on a position-less team: his best chance of landing on an All-NBA squad is if voters stick to the traditional format. Let’s assume that six forwards get in, six actual forwards. You can go ahead and pencil in Antetokounmpo, Kevin Durant, James and Jayson Tatum, in some order. That would leave two spots open, likely on the third team, and likely for Siakam and Butler.

Where it gets complicated and a lot tougher to predict is if voters get creative with the position designations. It just so happens that the two leading MVP candidates are centres. Of course, Jokic and Joel Embiid both deserve to be All-NBA first team, but that would require one of them to get voted in as a forward. It would take some coordination on the part of the voters to make it happen, but if it does, that eliminates a forward spot.

Although DeMar DeRozan is widely considered a guard, he’s played the bulk of his minutes at forward this season. Given the abundance of talent at the guard position, it would make sense to vote DeRozan in as a forward, but that’s one less spot for somebody like Siakam.

“Hey man, [the media does] their job, I do my job,” Siakam said when asked about All-NBA voting last week. “My job is hard enough.”

“I think I’m continuing to get better. It’s been a good long road for me and I just always believed all the work I have put in is going to pay off. No matter tough times or great times, I just want to stay focused on the grind and continue to get better as a player. I think there is a lot more to my game that can be unlocked and I just want to continue to do that.”

Siakam’s done his job, and then some. He’s made his case and it’s a strong one. We’ll see if it was strong enough to garner the recognition that he deserves.