Everything Pascal Siakam

[MixxAOR]

more of those to come.

[G__Deane]

More to come for Pascal!
Harden's ridiculous

[Maury]

Does Pascal have an outside shot at MVP?

[Puffer]

Does Pascal have an outside shot at MVP?

I wouldn't think so. In the conversation for spots 5-10 for sure. But I wouldn't bet against him this early in the season. uys made a career out of bankrupting bookies.

[GOLDBLUM]

He’s made the Bleacher Report MVP sleeper list, at any rate. Certainly at this flagpole he deserves to be in the conversation.

Guy is a GUARANTEED All Star at this point, that’s for damn sure.

https://bleacher report.com/articles/2862225-introducing-the-nbas-2020-mvp-race-sleepers?share=sms#slide0

[planetmars]

With Kyle's injury he's pretty much guaranteed a spot, unless the Raptors some how flame out of the playoff race before February. He'll be the "best" player on one of the best Eastern teams.

Let's hope he gets voted in though. Only 3 forward spots and both Embiid & Giannis will be locks. So let's hope he gets the 3rd spot. Although I see it going to Jimmy even though he plays more like a guard than a forward. Tatum for some reason will also get a lot of votes.

[bertarapsfan]

[bertarapsfan]

[G__Deane]

lebron seriously? From the little I've seen, Davis has been the better player even on his own team

[SkywalkerAC]

Only watched the highlights but Pascal is going to be in the MVP convo if he and the team continue like this.

[KeonClark]

"The Boston celtics" how cute Kendrick. Theyve had a nice couple weeks forsure. Maybe they'll win the American Thanksgiving eastern conference championship.

[KeonClark]

Great article on siakam, and his unprecedented ascent

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1...nard-improving

There’s a chance that calling last season Siakam’s leap will look premature in retrospect. Some players have a second jump in them. Leonard is one of them: Even in the summer following his first title, he was not yet a superstar. Comparing Siakam to Kawhi is to hold him to a nearly impossible standard. It would be a remarkable feat to even come close. Toronto paid Siakam based off a season and a projection. He’s still improving, after a season of award-worthy improvements. Becoming the “next Kawhi” may happen. Becoming the next version of Pascal is already on its way.

[planetmars]

Hollinger wrote a piece on him too.. but I don't have a subscription:
https://theathletic.com/1377840/2019...ter-heres-how/

[Ebonhawke]

Another article about Spicy P - this time from the noted sports publication, the BBC

https://www.bbc.com/sport/basketball/50377942

[chris]

siakam's on pace to basically go from posting antetokounmpo's 2015-16 number's (the year before giannis was MIP) to posting his 2017-2018 number's (the year after he won MIP and finished 6th in MVP voting), except he's doing it after he already won MIP. it's fucking bananas.

below are select quotes from hollingers article i stole from real GM. love the nurse quote that he can get better at absolutely everything. call me a homer but i don't think i'd trade him for anyone right now. i've never seen anyone with his skillset.

Of the 19 players taken directly ahead of Siakam, seven are out of the league entirely and six are hanging by a thread. Siakam, meanwhile, will be playing in his first All-Star Game in February (barring cataclysmic events), and could be on his way to a historic accomplishment this season.

The winner of the league’s Most Improved Player trophy a year ago, Siakam could end up improving his per-game numbers even more this year (see chart below). It’s utterly inconceivable that somebody could win MIP two years in a row; it almost goes without saying that nobody has come close to doing so. Of the last 10 winners, six regressed in the following season, one treaded water and three marginally improved. Even the improvers made only slight gains … not anywhere close to improving more than any other player in the league for a second straight season.

And yet …. For Siakam, this impossible repeat isn’t just possible, it seems almost a fait accomplit. Three weeks into the season, he’s a serious candidate.

The Raptors admit they didn’t see THIS coming, though. Armed with increasing confidence in his perimeter shot and the greenest of green lights, Siakam has gone supernova — playing shifts at point guard while Kyle Lowry is injured and taking over games from any position.

“He can be as good as anybody,” said Nurse, who has witnessed the entire evolution thus far from no-skill rookie to no-brainer All-Star. It doesn’t seem like hyperbole.

In the fourth quarter of Wednesday’s win over Portland, the hits came in rapid-fire succession as he scored 13 points in the final nine minutes to blow open a tie game. All five baskets were different. He hit a face-up mid-range J from the “Dirk post” at the free-throw line after a switch. He threw a seeing-eye pass to Rondae Hollis-Jefferson when multiple Blazers met his baseline drive to the cup. He scored on a cut from the corner capped by his trademark lightning spin move for a left-hand finish.

And finally, just for giggles, he spun into a game-icing, one-legged Dirk Nowitzki fadeaway when Portland’s Rodney Hood cut off his original right-hand drive and C.J. McCollum sat waiting near the charge circle.

Did I mention he might not be done improving?

Siakam pulls new tricks out of his bag seemingly every game, scoring in an astounding variety of ways. The once right-dominant player is increasingly using his left hand, and also reading the game more quickly every time out. His spin moves, in either direction, are a dizzying devastation executed with lightning speed and covering huge swaths of turf. The consecutive twists he unleashed against Portland’s Mario Hezonja on Wednesday – one to the left, one to the right – met the legal standard for torture under the Geneva Convention.

“I’ve always had that,” said Siakam of his signature move, nourished while playing as a skinny post player in college. “Having that speed and the agility to move after being fast, that’s something I always used to my advantage.”

And then there’s the shooting. I mentioned his brutal percentages in his second season; the Raptors and Siakam did something about it. Toronto reworked his shot from the ground up that offseason and it’s now paying massive dividends – thanks partly due to an insatiable work ethic that had Siakam doing two sessions a day.

Warning: the shot is still coming around.

“He just went to work on it,” said Nurse. “His mechanics are great now. He’s still a little bit away … there’s still a little more time to groove that stroke. He’s going to be a really, really good shooter because his mechanics are so good.”

Siakam torments opponents in pick-and-roll situations as well. Go back from earlier this week and watch this little piece of cruelty. Siakam — effectively playing point guard(!) and running a 4-5 pick-and-roll against the Lakers — feints toward a ball screen to his right and then quickly rejects it with a crossover, leaving Anthony Davis on his rear end. This is something that ballhandling wizards like Trae Young or Damian Lillard pull off. 6-9 power forwards? Not so much.

He’s pulling move likes this out of his bag on a nearly nightly basis in a package of befuddling pick-and-rolls, post-ups and isos. With so much variety in his game, the Raptors can keep defenses off balance even while feeding Siakam consistently.

The interesting thing about Siakam is that he’s hugely driven to improve, but doesn’t seem to care at all about winning an award for it. “Has not even crossed my mind,” he said about winning MIP again.

Regardless of whether he gets a trophy, the scary thing for the league is that both coach and player think this elevator is still going up. Where can Siakam get better? “Everything,” he said. “Leadership, to making shots off the dribble, mid-range shots, finishing everywhere, passing. Everything.”

For all the talk about Siakam’s improving shot, it’s just one notable distinction in a sea of them. He’s basketball’s version of the Big Bang, expanding in all directions simultaneously. Check out the jump in his rebounding, for instance. He’s playing on the perimeter more than ever, but that hasn’t stopped him from posting a career-high Rebound Rate.

At some point he will get tired, I’m sure, but that doesn’t appear to be any time soon. Even under a huge minute load, especially while Serge Ibaka and Lowry are on the shelf, he might be the fastest player in the league end-to-end and never stops moving; his suffocating defense has also held up. He looked like he could run a marathon when I talked to him after playing 41 minutes in Portland.

At this level, of course, it’s the mental as much as the physical that matters. Siakam grades out well here too – he’s become a killer, sizing up weaker opposition defenders like fresh meat. On Sunday he aggressively iso’d the Lakers’ Kyle Kuzma whenever the two were matched up, while on Wednesday he spun poor Hezonja senseless before the Blazers mercifully changed assignments. Switch a small defender on him, and he’ll immediately get to the block (Siakam packs deceptive strength despite his wiry frame) and go to work. Good luck, Avery Bradley.

The challenges will only grow from here. Those two wing iso’s against Hezonja on Wednesday might literally be the last time in his entire career he gets to work 1-on-1 against a backup with no help. Teams will throw junk defenses at him and spring traps and turn him into a passer – all the things the Raptors did Wednesday against Portland’s Damian Lillard, for instance.

Adjusting to life as a leading man will present other challenges, too – as a leader, as an initiator responsible for involving others, and in reading secondary defenders and understanding which passes add the most value.

All that is still developing, and will represent the next chapter in his story. His stardom, however, has officially arrived … even as his Q rating lags. Siakam emerged so quickly that for now he ranks among the league’s most anonymous stars – a world champion playing in North America’s 4th-largest city who is largely unknown to casual American audiences.

For now. But not for long.