When Kawhi Leonard left the Toronto Raptors for his hometown Los Angeles Clippers in the summer of 2019 — also known as “the last great summer in history” or “the summer before the storm” — the Raptors chose Pascal Siakam as his successor.
It was an obvious choice, really: Siakam was coming off a Most Improved Player campaign after averaging 17/7/3 on 55/37/76 as a third option on a championship team, and as an athletic six-foot-nine wing/forward hybrid, he had a unique skill set that is rare to find in the NBA; one that the Raptors wanted to build out and polish, even if it would take some time.
“I think that that's pretty much been the case that we were going to try to build him into that type of player after we had a couple departures in the roster,” Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said about Siakam becoming the No. 1 option. “He was the next logical choice there to do it.”
The early results were better than anyone could have reasonably imagined. Siakam averaged 23/7/3.5 on 45/36/79 shooting splits in his first season as a No. 1 option in 2019-20, carrying a usage rate of 27.8 percent, which ranked in the 93rd percentile among forwards that season. Siakam was arguably the best player on the second-best team in the NBA when the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the Raptors' season, earning his first All-Star berth and Second-Team All-NBA honours.
It’s worth noting that the 2019-20 team was stacked with talent, with Kyle Lowry also being named an All-Star, and Fred VanVleet, OG Anunoby, Norman Powell, Serge Ibaka, and Marc Gasol surrounding Siakam. Plus, after not being able to pick up a basketball for months, the Raptors flamed out in the NBA bubble, where Siakam struggled in all areas of his offensive game, as a switchy Boston Celtics team was able to take advantage of some of Siakam’s weaknesses.
And those struggles continued into the 2020-21 season, when the Raptors were forced to relocate to Tampa, Fla., and were hit with a team-wide COVID outbreak near the middle of the season. But regardless of the circumstances, Siakam was inconsistent, going through highs and lows as he struggled to prop up a less-balanced and less-talented team.
The Raptors, for their part, began to worry less about results and more about the process, putting the ball in Siakam’s hands and empowering him to be a point-forward type that could learn different defensive coverages and schemes as he went. That slow-played development has paid off, as Siakam is playing the best basketball of his career in 2021-22, and has been the best Raptor since the start of the new year, leading the team to a surprising 39-30 record, seventh in the East.