Everything Pascal Siakam

[LJ2]

It's been 5 games fellas, and we lost to the only good team we played.

[KeonClark]

In Canada, they'd be showing darts or a spelling bee.....

Spelling Bee Darts I could get behind. Every time a kid fucks up a word a professional dart player throws one at their head from 10 yards away

[KeonClark]

I don't think the league has ever seen this sort of year-by-year improvement. Nobody knows what to make of it. It's remarkable to watch.

36 months ago: who the fuck is this guy, why did we draft him? Uhhh Skal was available on the board Masai!!
24 months ago: ok maybe he will carve out a career as an energy big off the bench, nice pick
12 months ago: ok wow, maybe we should nervously compare him to "Draymond with maybe slightly better offense" or "don't flame me for saying this, but a Giannis-lite"

Now he's clearly a much better player than Draymond (maybe better than he ever was) and he's arguably top 10 or 15 in the entire league, in the same breath as the big boys

Crazy

[planetmars]

It's been 5 games fellas, and we lost to the only good team we played.

And we were really the better team. We just gave that one away.

[MixxAOR]

Hope he keeps this up. After 25 games we should have a better picture

[JawsGT]

His handle and shooting have been really impressive. Its looking like we have our kawhi replacement already. I mean, he can get even better in all likelihood. Top 10 player is a lock if he continues this level of play. Shit, is it possible to win MIP twice?

[G__Deane]

Spelling Bee Darts I could get behind. Every time a kid fucks up a word a professional dart player throws one at their head from 10 yards away

They'd need cheerleaders to get me to watch....hey wait

[SkywalkerAC]

I don't think the league has ever seen this sort of year-by-year improvement. Nobody knows what to make of it. It's remarkable to watch.

Yeah, I used to think DeMar was the posterboy for NBA-improvement, building his game piece by piece. But then Pascal came along...

[slaw]

I don't think the league has ever seen this sort of year-by-year improvement. Nobody knows what to make of it. It's remarkable to watch.

Giannis. The numbers are not that far off.

[Scraptor]

Giannis. The numbers are not that far off.

I think you could amend Nilanka's statement to say the league has never seen this sort of year-by-year improvement by a player who entered the league as old as Pascal was. That was a big part of the skepticism about his ceiling (at least for me). I think the big takeaway is that the age-ceiling relationship can be set aside when the player begins playing seriously as late as Pascal did, because there's just more runway for growth despite the comparatively advanced age.

And that is taking nothing away from Pascal's incredible work ethic. Full credit to him because without the work, the untapped potential means nothing.

[GOLDBLUM]

Yeah, I used to think DeMar was the posterboy for NBA-improvement, building his game piece by piece. But then Pascal came along...

In fairness, he was likely pretty influenced by Demar's attitude... and for that we should be grateful.

He obviously didn't take tips from him on D or how to shoot the 3 though...

[S.R.]

Plus the system, Pascal may turn out to be the first/best G League product essentially developed by an NBA team's "farm system." A guy as raw as him would have had no way to get all those minutes with a team as good as the Raptors prior to the G League being properly utilized like it is now.

[golden]

Just putting it out there....

https://www.basketball-reference.com/friv/mvp.html

https://www.basketball-reference.com....fcgi?id=MIiEE

[Puffer]

Plus the system, Pascal may turn out to be the first/best G League product essentially developed by an NBA team's "farm system." A guy as raw as him would have had no way to get all those minutes with a team as good as the Raptors prior to the G League being properly utilized like it is now.

I think this is a big factor. Is G League players getting selected in open tryouts without going to college a possibility? Or do they compromise their college eligibility by trying out?

[slaw]

I think you could amend Nilanka's statement to say the league has never seen this sort of year-by-year improvement by a player who entered the league as old as Pascal was. That was a big part of the skepticism about his ceiling (at least for me). I think the big takeaway is that the age-ceiling relationship can be set aside when the player begins playing seriously as late as Pascal did, because there's just more runway for growth despite the comparatively advanced age.

And that is taking nothing away from Pascal's incredible work ethic. Full credit to him because without the work, the untapped potential means nothing.

This is a great point and you see the flip side of it with a Stanley Johnson, for example, who entered the league with a great pedigree (opposite of Pascal) and hasn't improved much since. Player acquisition and development has a lot of art to it as well as science.