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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO – Shortly after Golden State took a 3-0 lead in its first-round series against Denver late on Thursday night, Draymond Green shared his thoughts on playoff basketball and what’s needed to conquer it.

“[Everybody’s] not made for the playoffs,” said the Warriors’ all-star forward and three-time NBA champion. “I don’t know if y’all can see that around the league, but you look around the league, [everybody’s] just not cut out for the playoffs.”

“You’ve gotta give credit to guys who show up in the playoffs because it’s just not a normal thing around this league. You look around and some guys that you think are guys are not guys in the playoffs, and that’s just what it is.”

It’s a timely discussion, as is often the case at this juncture of the year. Even the league’s best players have bad games here and there over the course of the regular season, but when it happens in April, May or, heaven forbid, in June, you can bet people are going to take notice. That’s just the nature of the postseason – the lights are brighter, the degree of difficulty is higher and the pressure rises the further you go.

Earlier that evening, Karl-Anthony Towns scored eight points and, notably, attempted only four shots as his Timberwolves coughed up a 26-point lead in a loss to Memphis. The night before, Pascal Siakam was held scoreless on just five shot attempts in the second half and overtime of the Raptors’ heartbreaking defeat at the hands of Philadelphia.

Both big men are coming off great seasons worthy of All-NBA recognition. Plenty is expected of them. So, naturally, they’ve both taken heat as a result of those performances. That’s completely fair, but the discourse requires some nuance.

Green has a point: the playoffs are different, but it’s far more complex than simply suggesting that some guys are built for it and others are not. It takes time to adapt and adjust to playoff basketball. Some players make the transition quicker than others.

Consider Green’s Warriors teammate Jordan Poole, the 22-year-old guard coming off a breakout third NBA season, who is averaging 28.7 points in his first three career playoff games. He’s been impressive, but he’s also playing next to Green, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson – three veteran leaders with championship experience who draw plenty of attention from opposing defences and alleviate pressure from the team’s younger players, like Poole.

The list of players capable of going deep in the postseason while playing a prominent role and impacting each and every game at a high level, consistently, is short. It’s an elite group. For most players, the line between playoff goat and playoff hero is thin.

In 2019, Fred VanVleet seemed unplayable through the Raptors’ second-round series against Philadelphia and the first half of the Conference Finals against Milwaukee before catching fire and becoming a key contributor to the team’s title run

For most of his tenure in Toronto, Kyle Lowry was tagged with a reputation for fading in the playoffs, often unfairly. He’s had some ugly shooting nights, to be sure. Even during the championship season, he famously went scoreless in the opener against Orlando. But some of his best and biggest performances as a Raptor came in the playoffs; none bigger than his masterpiece in the title-clinching Game 6 win over Golden State.

That brings us back to Siakam.

It’s possible to acknowledge that the sixth-year forward had a bad game in a big moment and that Toronto needed more from him without extrapolating it any further and making sweeping judgments about what he’s capable of as a player. We’ve been down this road before and you’d think people would have learned their lesson the last time they wrote him off.

Siakam was excellent in the 2019 playoffs, playing next to Kawhi Leonard and Lowry. His first postseason as the primary scorer didn’t go well, though some obvious caveats apply – he was not himself, mentally or physically, early in the pandemic and was neutralized by a tough Boston defence in the Orlando bubble playoffs.

Coming off a bounce-back campaign, his best as a pro, this series has been a mixed bag. He was solid in Philly, averaging 22.0 points, 6.5 rebounds and 6.5 assists on 42 per cent shooting over the first two games; good, but not great. He scored 12 points on 6-of-11 shooting in the first half of Wednesday’s crucial Game 3 before disappearing as the night went on.

Siakam missed all five of his shots in the second half and overtime and recorded just one rebound and two assists in 27 minutes as Philadelphia took a commanding 3-0 lead in the series.

He’s not the only reason why the Raptors find themselves on the brink of elimination going into Saturday’s Game 4. VanVleet has also struggled to score, matching Siakam’s total of 12 points in Game 3. They’ve missed Scottie Barnes, who hasn’t played since he injured his left ankle late in last week’s opener. Gary Trent Jr. has been battling fevers, weight loss and some difficulty catching his breath due to a viral illness that’s limited his effectiveness in this series. As a team, they’ve had trouble executing on both ends of the floor, but mostly, Joel Embiid and the Sixers have thoroughly outplayed them.

Still, it’s fair to say they need more from their best player. Tobias Harris has defended Siakam well on the perimeter, and Embiid is waiting for him if and when he gets into the paint. The Sixers have given him a lot of attention, as you would expect, but for whatever reason, he hasn’t been able to adjust as well or as quickly as he did during his impressive regular season.

Siakam took a step forward in a lot of different facets this year, but the biggest and most important leap he made was as a playmaker. With an improved ability to read defences and adjust on the fly, he always seemed to find a way to impact the game, even on nights when his shot wasn’t falling.

In a game against Minnesota last month, a couple days after he dropped 40 points on Boston, the Timberwolves sent multiple defenders his way and made a concerted effort to take the ball out of his hands. While he didn’t shoot the ball well and scored just 12 points, he dished out a personal-best 13 assists and recorded his second career triple-double. After getting a late start to the campaign due to his recovery from off-season shoulder surgery, he went months without having a bad, or low-impact, game.

Ideally, the Raptors need him to be more aggressive with his shot, but they also trust him to make the right play and to take what the defence is giving him. However, if the shot isn’t there, he has to find other ways to make his mark on the game, whether that’s with the pass, with his defence, or by getting to the free throw line. He didn’t do enough of any of those things on Wednesday.

“I think for me, I just gotta stay aggressive, get to my spots and live with the results,” said Siakam. “I feel like I can always get the shot that I want on the floor, I just gotta do it consistently. You’re gonna make some and you’re gonna miss some, and it looks a lot better when you make them, obviously.”

“I’ll sleep peacefully if I do all that, give it my all and take the shots that I know I can make. If they happen to go in, that’ll be good for us, and if not, it is what it is.”

Siakam has 50 games of playoff experience under his belt now, but many of them came as a reserve early in his career, or as the third option on a championship team. He’s still learning and growing through these experiences. When head coach Nick Nurse talks about the importance of his young team getting these valuable playoffs reps, he’s not just referring to the guys in their early 20s. At 28, Siakam is not a finished product.

“What I was two years ago is not the same thing I am now as a player,” Siakam said. “I think that the experience from just being in the playoffs, we all learn from it. Even players that have been in the league a long time, that [have] been in many playoff games, I'm sure that there's some series where they learn something about themselves or about their game or how they can evolve. I think that we all continue to grow as players and the playoffs are the perfect time for that and to understand different things about your game.”