The Toronto Raptors are the best team in the NBA after about a quarter of the season – also because their strength goes far beyond the superstars Kawhi Leonard and Kyle Lowry. Pascal Siakam may even be the team’s hottest award candidate. The path that the Cameroonian has taken up to here is already more than remarkable.
In the night on Thursday the Raptors meet the Philadelphia 76ers (live on DAZN from 2am).
Looking at the first section of the season, there are some good candidates for the Most Improved Player Award. Pascal Siakam belongs far up in the rankings: The Cameroonian has almost doubled his point average, and although his role is much bigger now, the odds have also risen.
He even leads the NBA in the two of them at the moment – normally only pure Dunk machines like DeAndre Jordan achieve more than 70 percent quota. Siakam likes to stuffs, but his role in the offense goes far beyond that. For the first time this year, his third, he also meets the threesome at least to some extent promisingly. Defensively, he’s even more important. It’s hard to believe how big the difference is between year 2 and year 3 for Siakam, even though he was able to hint at this two-way potential last season as a banker.
On the other hand, the more you learn about Siakam, the less surprising its development within the NBA career. Nothing happens to him according to a familiar pattern – Siakam has only been playing organised basketball for a little over six years. And the lateral entry did not take place like Hakeem Olajuwon or Joel Embiid after a growth spurt that made the previously practiced sports more difficult. Siakam should not become an athlete, but a priest. That’s right.
Although Siakam’s family attaches great importance to basketball and his three older brothers all received college scholarships in the USA, his father had a different vision for Pascal and enrolled him in a seminary at the age of eleven. Although this was not his wish, out of respect for his father, he continued his education until his graduation in 2012. The fact that he would end up in the NBA just four years later had to do not only with great talent but also with huge coincidences.
For years Siakam liked to play basketball in his spare time, but without structure or big ambitions. “For someone who didn’t play, I was fine,” Siakam later said to ESPN. Due to the success of his brothers, he was invited to a basketball camp in 2011, one year before his graduation, which was supposed to change a lot.
Many African basketball players have experienced similar coincidences. The talents of Olajuwon and Embiid were discovered in passing, both trying other sports beforehand. Siakam tried something completely different and yet he got to the right person through detours. Like Embiid, he was discovered at the camp by Luc Mbah a Moute, the basketball pioneer par excellence in Cameroon.
Although he was extremely raw, his commitment and athleticism impressed enough to get him an invitation again for the following year. In 2012 Siakam already played so well that he was invited to another camp together with some camp participants – Basketball Without Borders. There again he first noticed a certain Masai Ujiri, who was still working as general manager of the Denver Nuggets at that time.
Not that he was immediately convinced. “When I first saw him there, I couldn’t have said if he was an NBA player,” Ujiri later told ESPN. “So incredible is his story. But his engine was remarkable.”
The engine, the perception, the physical characteristics and a rather strong ambition impressed not only Ujiri. Although Siakam had hardly any fundamentals and could not throw, his appearances at BWB helped him to the next step. There was a fellowship from God’s Academy in Lewisville, Texas, a year later New Mexico State University contacted with an offer. Suddenly Siakam had a future in basketball via detours – although the NBA was still far from being conceivable.
The NCAA career almost didn’t work out either. In the 13/14 season Siakam did not play, but trained like a berserk. In the middle of the preparation for the 14/15 season, fate came to light: Siakam’s father died in a car accident in Cameroon. The son naturally wanted to travel to the funeral, as did his siblings, who also live in the USA. But this would probably have meant the end of his basketball dreams.
As wrong as that may sound, since Siakam was just about to apply for a new visa in the USA, it was considered too risky to leave the country – he probably should not have returned. “My brothers told me not to come. My mother too,” Siakam remembered. He complied with one condition: From now on everything should be subordinated to basketball. Siakam wanted to make the most of his opportunity in honor of his father.
“Pascal took his own development more seriously after his father died,” college coach Marvin Menzies recalled. “He wanted to make him proud.” The results were not long in coming. Siakam became WAC Freshman of the Year, although according to his own testimony he can only remember details of this season to a limited extent – the pain suppressed everything else. But he drove him too: In his second year Siakam already became Player of the Year in his Conference.
It was supposed to be the last year of college. Siakam saw 2016 the time ripe to try it with the NBA, although he was not considered a safe pick everywhere. During a workout in Toronto, Siakam met his old friend Ujiri again, who hardly recognized him four years later – and Raptors coach Dwane Casey, who made a similar observation as Ujiri before him. “He’s got the best engine I’ve ever seen,” Casey still said about him.
Siakam still wasn’t a finished basketball player – as he was after such a short time – but his potential as an energizer was obvious. The Raptors reacted: With the No. 9 pick they chose Jakob Pöltl, but at No. 27 they chose Siakam. Curious: The first Austrian NBA player was by far not the most “unlikely” NBA player who ran for the Raptors from now on.
Siakam has continued along this unusual path seamlessly in the NBA. In the first game of his career he was allowed to start, in the second season he was one of the central figures of Toronto’s outstanding Bench Unit.
His second year potential should have made him a logical addition to the trade that brought Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green to Toronto; the fact that the Spurs didn’t demand O.G. Anunoby or Siakam as a counterpart should give them long sleepless nights. Especially when they look at Siakam’s game in the third season.
What the Raptors can do defensively on the wing is almost unfair. As if Leonard (2x Defensive Player of the Year) and the re-strengthened Green would not be enough – the new coach Nick Nurse can also offer Anunoby, Delon Wright, Norman Powell and Siakam. Its development in the offense, however, is perhaps the most surprising positive development in Toronto this season.
Siakam can now do much more with the ball in his hand. His touch has improved from year to year and his spin move has become feared. In the restricted area, Siakam hits 79.7 percent (!!) of his litters. And even the largest construction site is constantly getting better. Siakam has already raised his triple quota to 33.3 percent and optimized his movement.
“I can’t wait to get to the point where I’m an elite shooter,” Siakam said during last year’s playoffs. “It’ll happen – soon.” If you look at the odds and the still quite small volume (1.8 threes per game), “elitist” seems a little high on the agenda. However, one can hardly doubt that Siakam can reach this point in view of his prehistory – and then all doors will finally be open to him, even as a potential all-star.
With almost 25 years Siakam’s potential hasn’t been exhausted yet, he just started playing a few years ago. Within a very short time, he had gone from being a priest in spe to a high achiever of a legitimate candidate for the finals. Who wants to tell this guy that any developmental step is “not realistic” or even impossible for him? You don’t bet against Pascal Siakam.