Toronto Raptors: How the Raptors build a championship team

Pascal Siakam

To say that Siakam has had an unconventional journey to the NBA is an understatement. As Siakam himself explains in The Player’s Tribune profile entitled Taking a Chance on the Unknown, (P.S. it’s a great read) he wanted to be a professional soccer player which is the norm for children in Cameroon. There was also the added dimension that all of his older brothers played basketball and as is often the case with youngest siblings, he didn’t want to follow the crowd.

The year before he graduated from the seminary where he had been since he was 11 years old, because of what is possibly best described as a whim, a thing he decided to do just for fun, his life headed off in  a completely different direction:

"That changed [wanting to play soccer] in 2012, when I graduated from the seminary. The summer before I had played in the Luc Mbah a Moute Basketball Camp, just for fun. Apparently I had caught someone’s eye, because the next year I got invited to the Basketball Without Borders camp in South Africa. At first, I was going to turn the invitation down. But my sister Vanessa lived in South Africa, and I hadn’t seen her in a few years. I thought, A free trip to South Africa to hang out with my sister and all I gotta do is play a little basketball? Why not!"

In perhaps a bit of kismet, future Raptors’ teammate and co-Champion, Serge Ibaka was a counselor at the camp that year. His play at Basketball Without Borders is, of course, Siakam’s first blip on Masai Ujiri’s radar. Ujiri told ESPN:

"I will tell you honestly, when I saw Pascal in Basketball Without Borders [in 2012], I couldn’t even tell you if he was an NBA player."

Basketball Without Borders is part the reason that when it came time for the Raptors to make their 27th overall pick in the 2016 Draft, Ujiri knew something that few others did. And while Ujiri had earned the trust of Raptors fans for, among other things, his late draft pick of Norman Powell, he was widely criticized for his choice.

According to SBNation, Draft Express had projected Siakam to be drafted  43rd in a mock draft. Sports Illustrated gave the pick only a C+ grade, calling Siakam “somewhat of a reach”.  Forbes gave the pick a D- saying:

"Just what Toronto was thinking with this pick with Deyonta Davis still on the board is a mystery. …there’s no doubt that the Raptors could have done so much better with this pick."

Were I in Masai Ujiri’s shoes, I think I would have a hard time not being irritatingly smug knowing what was being said at the time and then seeing how things have worked out. Then again, considering the level of Ujiri’s confidence in his decisions, I’m sure he doesn’t even pay attention to this stuff.

And even if he did, various articles re-doing the 2016 draft show that the once skeptical media now understand what Ujiri saw all along. Several have Siakam falling in the top ten at different times since 2016. In June, Sportsnet had Pascal Siakam as the 2nd pick overall in their redraft. This was a reference I was hesitant to cite since Sportsnet, who airs half of the Raptors’ regular-season games could easily be seen as holding a positive bias for Spicy P. But then I read a nba.com article that says:

"Based on what we know now, there’s no way Siakam would fall outside of the lottery if we were to redo the 2016 NBA Draft. Ben Simmons would likely still go No. 1, but there’s a case to be made for Siakam being the second-best player in the class."

And yes, I know that just one paragraph below is the legalese that says, “Just so you know, the NBA or its teams don’t necessarily agree with this article.” But, it was most certainly written by someone with much more distance from Siakam and published on an outlet that by its nature demands unbiased reporting.

In any case, while Siakam didn’t have a bump-free journey from Draft night to his integral starting role on a championship team, he proved correct Ujiri’s faith in him long before he was awarded the Most Improved Player award for the 2018- 19 season.

And remember when I said that I believed that Nurse was the perfect choice for the Raptors? Pascal Siakam’s breakout season is one of those reasons. With Dwane Casey still as head coach with his execute the play focused style, there is no way that Siakam would have had the freedom to become the kind of player that doesn’t need to have plays called for him.

Even had the Raptors not gone on to win in the NBA Finals, the emergence of The Spicy One is something that bodes well for the future of Raptors’ basketball.