Josh Lewenberg TSN Raptors Reporter Follow|Archive

In an emotional moment, one he won't soon forget, Pascal Siakam was announced to the crowd as a starter ahead of his professional debut with the Toronto Raptors last Wednesday — the culmination of an improbable journey from Cameroon to the NBA.

As he heard his name echo through a sold out Air Canada Centre for the first time it suddenly became very real. That's when it hit him: how far he's come, the obstacles conquered and — most importantly — the man he was doing it all for.

“They called my name for the starters. It was amazing,” the rookie forward told reporters after the game. “At that moment, I just thought about my dad and everything. It was nothing I can explain. I don’t have words to explain how it was.”

Siakam continues to defy the odds, but he's doing so with a heavy heart.

In October of 2014, just before the start of his son's freshman season at New Mexico State, Tchamo Siakam was killed in a car accident. He had always hoped that one of his four sons would make the NBA.

“I think he just loved everything about it,” Siakam, the youngest of the boys, said of his late father’s passion for basketball. “He loved the excitement of the game. I remember talking to him on the phone and he always told us, ‘Go between the legs or dunk, that's what people like.’ So he liked that part of the game — the intensity, the dunking, the shooting three-pointers and the excitement, how you can make people feel good.”

Growing up in Douala, Cameroon, Siakam couldn't escape the sport. His older brothers — Boris, Christian and James — all played. Each of them eventually left home to compete collegiately in the United States. Despite the physical gifts he shared with them, he had no intention of following in their footsteps. Siakam played soccer and was interested in business management. He thought about going to work with his dad at his transit company.

“I wanted to do something different,” he admitted. “I wanted to be the guy that's going to be like, 'Nah, I'm not going to do basketball, I'm going to do something else.’ I was going to go to college and finish college and do [business]. But things happen for a reason."

Siakam didn't start playing basketball competitively until 2012. Attending a Basketball Without Borders camp in South Africa, he was inspired by the success stories of guest coaches Serge Ibaka, Luol Deng and Luc Mbah a Moute. "If you put the work in, you can be something special," they told him. It was there that he first met Masai Ujiri, a director of the camp and, at that time, general manager of the Denver Nuggets.

“He didn't stand out,” Ujiri recalls now, four years later. “There was nothing to say, ‘Oh, I knew that guy was going to be this.’”

Like most of the players Ujiri sees at these camps, Siakam was very raw. He was skinny and didn't know how to harness his natural talent, but played with great energy — a quality that turned at least a couple heads.

A few months later he relocated to Texas to play high school basketball before committing to New Mexico State, where he honed his craft. In two seasons with the Aggies, Siakam got bigger and stronger. He developed a post game, but the passion and effort he had always played with remained. In 2015-16 he averaged 20.3 points, 11.6 rebounds and 2.2 blocks, making him the unanimous choice for Western Athletic Conference Player of the Year Honours.

All the while, Ujiri — who had made the move to Toronto's front office — and his scouting staff were keeping a keen eye on Siakam's development. They went to see him at New Mexico State and were amazed by how much he had grown as a player in such a short amount of time. Even with the level of competition in mind, they were impressed by the numbers he was putting up. It showed them that he wasn't just potential, that he wasn't just long and athletically gifted. He was putting his tools to work.

Everything about him, both on and off the court, seemed to fit with what the Raptors look for in players, which was evident when they worked him out in Buffalo prior to the June NBA draft.

“He's got a great way about him,” Ujiri said. “He's studious, he works hard. He's got a great spirit around people. But he's very serious and I like guys that are serious and competitive. We're trying to win and it doesn't matter, young player or old player, whoever it is that you bring in. We're trying to win. He's not anywhere close. He's going to have tons of ups and downs. He's a rookie.”

Fittingly, he finds himself in a unique situation just two games into his pro career. A late first-round pick — selected 27th overall by Toronto — Siakam is starting and playing meaningful minutes at the power forward position for a team that's coming off a 56-win season and has aspirations of returning to the Conference Finals. An injury to Jared Sullinger opened the door but, true to character, he's working to seize the opportunity.

After a near flawless performance on opening night - four points and nine rebounds on 2-of-2 shooting in 22 spirited minutes against Detroit - Siakam turned in another encouraging outing in a tough matchup with the Cavaliers on Friday.

Frustrated after picking up three quick fouls and fumbling a pass under the rim, the rookie tossed his towel on the way back to the bench before getting a pep talk from assistant coach and former NBA big Jamaal Magloire. By the time he checked back in his head was held high again and his energy helped ignite a third-quarter run.

Siakam and fellow rookie Jakob Poeltl have been the last Raptors players hanging around the team's practice facility just about every day since the start of camp. After most of their teammates have wrapped up for the afternoon they'll run through a series of on-court drills and review game tape with the assistant coaches.

“I'm always going to be late [to have learned the game],” said the 22-year-old. “I didn't start to play basketball when I was two years old, three years old. So it's like I'm always going to be behind so the best thing to do is going to be just trying to learn and listen a lot because that's the only way I'm going to catchup.”

Now, Siakam's not just living his own dream, he's living it for his father, who would certainly be proud of the player and the man he's become.

“The way he talked about the game and how bad he wanted it to happen for one of my brothers, to play in the NBA, he was always passionate about it,” Siakam said. “I think he would be so happy. He would just brag about me to his friends and he would be so, so happy. I know that he's somewhere watching and he's happy there.”