Raptors' Siakam poised for breakout third season After a busy summer of hard work, and all the unexpected – and perhaps even unwanted – attention it has earned him, Pascal Siakam has been billed as one of the league’s breakout candidates for the 2018-19 campaign. Josh Lewenberg explains what the Raptors can expect from their hard-working 24-year-old.

Josh Lewenberg TSN Raptors Reporter Follow|Archive

TORONTO – After a busy summer of hard work, and all the unexpected – and perhaps even unwanted – attention it has earned him, Raptors forward Pascal Siakam sits at his locker and watches the clock on the far wall, eagerly awaiting the start of a meaningless game.

“It’s go time,” he told TSN ahead of Saturday’s pre-season opener in Vancouver, the first opportunity for the third-year pro to get back on the court and really show off the fruits of his labour. “It’s exciting. This is what you work for every day. It’s an exciting moment, finally getting out there in the bright lights and playing [again].”

Siakam has been billed as one of the league’s breakout candidates for the 2018-19 campaign, and while he isn’t shying away from the hype, necessarily, you can tell it makes him slightly uncomfortable.

“It doesn’t really matter, to be honest,” Siakam said of the recent fanfare. “For me, it’s just about the work, and I’ve always done that. Obviously it’s cool when people recognize you, but at the end of the day this is what matters right now.”

The 24-year-old has always been a worker. He was a worker even before he picked up a basketball and started playing the game competitively, just eight short years ago. He has worked since Toronto went off the board to select him 27th overall in the 2016 NBA Draft. So, he doesn’t quite understand what made this past summer different from the ones that came before it, other than more cameras floating around – a product of the social media age.

He shares some of the blame, having posted a couple of the videos himself. And yes, he can appreciate that irony. In mid-July he tweeted a one-minute mix tape that showed him crossing up defenders, beating them off the dribble, threading the needle on some tough passes in traffic, hitting step-back jumpers, and throwing down vicious dunks.

Home Team Hoops put the tape together from Siakam’s daily workouts and runs on the UCLA campus. Siakam didn’t expect it to blow up, and neither did his older brother, Christian – Pascal’s closest confidant.

“He’s always been low key,” said the elder Siakam brother. “But this time he just wanted to show his skills, show what he can do. He has a lot to offer. People don’t always get a chance to see that.”

The video went viral, and quick. A few days later Siakam was named Drew League Player of the Week after posting a triple-double of 38 points, 15 rebounds and 11 assists in his debut game, and the legend grew.

Siakam’s summer got off to a fast start. After last season ended in disappointment for the Raptors – another second-round sweep at the hands of LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers – Siakam had his annual exit meeting with team brass. President Masai Ujiri gave him a list of things to work on and told him to come back in the fall expecting to fill a bigger role.

He didn’t want to waste any time. Immediately following his first NBA season, Siakam and his brother had gone on vacation, as most players do – finding a beach somewhere to unwind after a long and gruelling year and before getting back in the gym and preparing for the next one. This summer, Siakam opted to skip the vacation and go straight to work.

Outside of a trip to South Africa for Basketball Without Borders, where his basketball career once began, Siakam spent most of the offseason training in Los Angeles.

He was a regular in Rico Hines’ gym at UCLA. He met Hines – a player development coach, currently working as an assistant with the Stockton Kings of the G League – through his agent just before he was drafted, and they’ve been training together each summer since.

Siakam would get to the gym around 7AM and begin his workout. He would do some weight training, conditioning work and individual drills before lunch. In the afternoon he would come back and take part in Hines’ famed UCLA runs.

The young forward says those games have been crucial to his continued development. You can work on things in an empty gym for hours or run various drills until you’re able to do them in your sleep, but that only gets you so far. Siakam knows that applying those lessons in-game and getting as many reps as possible is just as important, especially for a player that relies on his instincts, and one that didn’t pick up the sport until he was 16.

Each day the competition would be different – from college players, to former pros like Baron Davis or Cuttino Mobley, to bona fide NBA stars like James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Paul George and Kevin Durant. Later in the summer the rest of Toronto’s young nucleus – including Fred VanVleet, Delon Wright, OG Anunoby and Norman Powell – joined the scrimmages. The one constant was Siakam, who wasn’t just turning the heads of fans watching clips on YouTube. His peers have also taken notice of the work he is putting in, and the improvement it has inspired.

“Pascal was in the gym more than anybody else this past summer,” said Hines, guesting on TSN Radio last month. “He lived in there. Obviously the guys like Chris Paul and James Harden and Paul George, everybody loves him. I mean everybody loves him. And they always say to me, ‘Rico, man, that guy, he’s gotten so much better’. They love his game and they love his spirit because he plays so doggone hard, and he loves being on the basketball court and does a lot of great things. The good thing about basketball is people see your hard work. A lot of people see it, man, and hopefully he can continue to improve and get better, and I know he will.”

Most people know well enough to take off-season hype or even summertime mix tapes with a grain of salt, but it’s hard not to get excited about the type of player Siakam is blossoming into and what he’s able to do on the court.

As a sophomore, Siakam took a big step forward last season, particularly in regards to his ball handling, passing and playmaking ability.

In danger of getting typecast as an ‘energy guy’ after an up and down rookie campaign, Siakam worked to rebrand himself. Now he’s more than just an athlete or a rim runner, he’s a burgeoning point-forward, someone the Raptors trust to initiate the offence. The way he thinks the game and sees the floor is unique for a player his size, and – rightly or wrongly – he has drawn comparisons to Warriors all-star forward Draymond Green.

The hole in his game, as most people know, is his jump shot. He hit just 22 per cent of his 132 three-point attempts last season – easily the lowest mark of the 203 NBA players to hoist that many. At one point he missed 27 straight. Even after making it a priority over the summer, launching hundreds per day, it remains a work in progress.

In Saturday’s pre-season opener – a 122-104 win over Portland – Siakam missed all three of his three-point tries. Despite the poor shooting night, he was one of Toronto’s standouts. He grabbed 13 boards in 21 minutes – something they will need from him when he’s playing in smaller lineups this year – and recorded three assists.

It was our first look at how new head coach Nick Nurse intends to deploy him. With the obvious caveats in mind – it was one pre-season game, after all – Siakam had a 24 per cent usage rate (percentage of team plays used by a player while he’s on the floor) in his 24 minutes, a massive increase on his usage rate from last season (16 per cent) and higher than Kyle Lowry’s on the night (23 per cent). Again, grain of salt, but it’s clear the Raptors want the ball in Siakam’s hands as much as possible.

In one first-quarter play, Siakam grabbed a defensive rebound, lead the break – as they’re encouraging him to do more often – and dumped the ball down to Jonas Valanciunas, who found an open Lowry in the corner. In the second half, Siakam got out in transition, sucked in a couple defenders as he got into the paint, and kicked the ball out to VanVleet for an open three.

“His handle has kind of been there,” Nurse said last week. “It’s just giving him the freedom to do it and that comes with everybody realizing he can do it. I remember a film session we had last year, there were five times in the game where he snapped down a rebound, pushed it up the floor and either laid it in or kicked it out. We showed him all of them in sequence. It was just kind of a fun moment and we were saying we want to promote you doing this in front of the whole team. So, yeah we like to give him some freedom to make plays.”

“When P goes out there with the confidence he has now, pushing the ball and making plays, it’s going to be huge for us, and huge for myself and [VanVleet], when we can kind of run the floor, trailing, and shoot threes,” said Lowry. “That's going to be a huge part of it. I think he'll create more for others than he'll create for himself with that talent.”

Siakam will reprise his role coming off Toronto’s bench this season, but with close friend Jakob Poeltl in San Antonio he should see an uptick in minutes (he logged just under 21 per game last year). The Raptors figure to be one of the NBA’s most versatile teams, on both ends of the floor, and while Kawhi Leonard is at the forefront of that, Siakam also has a lot to do with it.

With a productive summer behind him, the Raptors are expecting big things from Siakam, and the third-year forward seems ready to take another step. If he isn’t already, he better get used to all the praise he’s been getting.

“I definitely feel like I’m improving, getting better,” Siakam said. “And I think that’s one of the things that I pride myself on, just getting better and always getting after it. It definitely got me better last year and I think it’s going to get me even better this year.”