Gary Trent Jr. is a consummate professional and he has every reason to be with his father having provided a blueprint since childhood. He knows how to focus on controlling only what he can and understands that there’ll be bumps in the road in any athlete’s journey. There’s hardly anything in Trent Jr.’s manual when it comes to being an NBA pro that he didn’t get from Gary Trent Sr.
Yet, when Trent Jr. looked ahead to the off-season last May, he was quick to spotlight Pascal Siakam’s work ethic and drive as something he wanted to learn from. In the midst of being Toronto’s most underrated internal development story of the season, Trent Jr. credited Siakam for the intent with which he attacks each day.
“I wouldn’t say I stole his blueprint but I would say his approach,” Trent Jr. said at practice Wednesday. “He comes in, he puts in the work. Good games, bad games, he’s gonna work. Obviously, I already knew that and it’s good to see that, but when we’ve got Pascal doing it and leading the way, everybody sees it and follows it. Can’t do nothing but have the dominos falling effect.”
For Siakam, the dominos of his work ethic have been falling ever since he started playing organized basketball at the age of 17. Now, that sustained intent in becoming the best player he can be has brought him to the precipice of true superstardom as the Raptors’ main lynchpin.
His 35-point night in a win over Charlotte seems to have become par for the course. How much can an 11-for-13 night against the 11-32 Hornets stand out when he’s literally had a 14-for-17 night in the NBA Finals? It marked the seventh time he scored at least 30 points in a game this season and the 50th time of his career in the regular season, fourth-most in franchise history.
What does stand out most is the variety to his attack now.
The ability to score in and around the basket with brilliant footwork assisted by clever spins and feints will always be his bread and butter, but the mid-range started to add a different dimension last year, and now three-pointers from above the break, as well as getting to the free-throw line at a career-best rate are making his game as whole as can be.
After hovering at just over five free-throw attempts per game for the last three seasons, Siakam is now up to 8.6 attempts per game this season. That’s a story in and of itself, the fact that what some may have perceived to be an aspect of his game that had reached its limit or gone stagnant but he still kept believing that it could be an avenue of growth.
The 28-year-old had already been drawing fouls on 13.5 percent of his shots last season to put him in the 90th percentile among forwards but has now catapulted to the 94th percentile with an 18.9 percent rate so far this season. There are some guards and forwards who always focus on the finish, even evading contact to cleanly get the shot off even if it means making the attempt more difficult, others who have the sole intent of drawing the foul and can sometimes look silly when no whistle follows. Siakam belonged in the former category and made it a point of emphasis this off-season to move closer to the middle of that spectrum.
“Just being a threat from different levels on the floor helps,” Siakam said after the win Thursday in which he went 10-for-12 at the line. “I definitely work on that, there was a lot of film watching and just trying to see how I can exploit the defence and I think most of the time for me I always wanted to be quicker and just finish it instead of sometimes just taking what the defence is giving you and being more calm, off two feet, different things that I think about every time I’m out there and that’s helping. Hopefully, it keeps going that way.”
Siakam was asked if he’s got anything in the works that might present a new wrinkle for defences by the end of the season but elected not to reveal anything. Watching him take three-pointers in end of quarter scenarios, though – he knocked down his fourth of the season on Thursday – is eyebrow raising when considering it’s something he didn’t look to do in those situations a season ago and of course when looking back on his starting point in recognizing the need to become a shooting threat.
It all began after leading the Raptors 905 to a G League championship in 2017, when he joined the parent club just in time to get swept by Cleveland and learn that if he wanted to get minutes in an NBA post-season, he would need to learn how to shoot jumpers. The day following Toronto’s season-ending loss, Siakam was in the gym telling the coaches he wanted to work on his shooting.
“We changed some mechanics but that’s a very small thing,” Nurse said during the Raptors’ 2019 championship run. “He took it and just absolutely ran with it. Two, three times a day, every day, just trying to get that part of his game better and that just shows that he was extremely hard working, just super, super committed to finding a place in this league and improving his game.”
In addition to flirting with a flair for the dramatic from long distance, Siakam is knocking down 37 percent of his catch-and-shoot threes and 34 percent of his non-corner threes which is his highest percentage from that area save for the 2019-20 season.
“A lot of reps, I don’t know an exact number,” Siakam said when asked how long it takes to make something he practices worthy of executing in a game setting. “There’s people out there who are super talented and maybe they can do it a quicker way, they’re just gifted that way. I just feel like I have to continue to work, some things come naturally and some things you have to work on them and you have to have a lot of reps. I’m one of those guys that’s gonna do all the reps, I’m gonna be out there every single day doing it over and over.”
Averaging 26.1 points, 8.3 rebounds, and 6.4 assists with a 57.3 true shooting percentage – a career-best mark since taking on the lead role for the Raptors – Siakam continues to scale new heights and prove his ceiling genuinely remains unknown. There isn’t a facet of basketball he isn’t willing to explore in order to get better, and the results so far have him set to make a second all-star appearance.
“I never want to be satisfied,” Siakam said. “I never wanna feel like I have nothing to work on. I feel like there's always something to work on. There's always something to get better at. And I think it depends on different games, different opponents, it could be anything and I just don't want to be content with being okay. I want to see how far I can reach. I want to see the levels I can get to, and it's like, ‘Why not?’”