Raptors face near-impossible challenge of replicating Siakam success story

TORONTO — No matter how long the process, in the end, a trade is always a surprise. It was today to Pascal Siakam.

Even as the rumours heated up and talks were reported as 'active,' Siakam was going about his normal game day routine, expecting to suit up as a Toronto Raptor for the 511th time, the fifth most in franchise history.

The sense was, per league sources, that since the Indiana Pacers were determined to hold firm and not include any of their top young talent in a trade — not Ben Mathurin, the second-year lottery pick from Montreal, not Andrew Nembhard, the fast-rising second-round pick from the same draft who the Raptors have been coveting since he blew them away in a pre-draft workout in the summer of 2022, and not Jarace Walker, the wide-bodied power-forward the Pacers took 8th overall this past June — the Raptors would let things spool out a little bit more.

The trade deadline, after all, is three weeks away.

But that all changed quickly. Siakam will be on a flight to Indiana in the morning. The Raptors reached a point where they believed the offer they had was the best they were going to get and the saga regarding Siakam’s future with the team that drafted him — which had been percolating since the opening days of the 2022-23 season — was finally over.

More than anything — more than the minutiae of the return, good or bad, or process that made this deal eventually seem inevitable — it’s important to take pause and recognize that a fundamental piece of the most inspiring seasons the Toronto Raptors have ever had is gone. Siakam is the scrawny kid from Cameroon who started the first NBA game he ever saw, who won the NBA’s Most Improved Player Award, who scored 32 points on 17 shots in his first NBA Finals game, and who used his good fortune to start a long list of innovative and meaningful education oriented charitable efforts. He led the NBA in minutes per game twice and had a 52-point game in Madison Square Garden.

Raptors fans watched him start out as a fun-loving, fast-running, high-flying member of the bench mob and mature into a high-skilled veteran who could command entire offensive possessions against the best defenders in the league.

He never let any of the contract and trade drama that swirled around him for most of the past 18 months affect his production or professionalism. As the Raptors shifted offensive emphasis under new head coach Darko Rajakovic to cater more to Scottie Barnes, Siakam didn’t pout. After a brief adjustment period, he was as productive as ever, through any of the tumult relying on his mantra: "I’m just a hooper." Translation: In any circumstances, he’ll trust his game and his work ethic to make sense of it all.

For a rookie head coach trying to establish himself with a new team, Siakam’s approach was deeply appreciated.

"Pascal is just a pure basketball junkie," said Rajakovic Wednesday. "He is the first one to show up in the gym, the last one to leave. He was always coachable, always professional since day one. We had the opportunity to grab dinners and talk in training camp in Vancouver. He had a great lunch, talked about the season, his role, how I can help him, how we can help him, how he can help the team. And I can only be thankful and grateful for all of his contributions to our team this season. But also, I have to acknowledge that he spent nine years with this organization. He came here as almost (a) teenager and left quite a legacy behind him.”

The Raptors are now 1-0 without him. Toronto stunned the visiting Miami Heat with a 121-97 win in which the Raptors led by as many as 36 points in the first half before Miami cut the Raptors lead to 13 with nine minutes to play. But Toronto got threes from Gary Trent Jr. and Dennis Schroder wrapped around a pull-up jumper from Barnes to stave off the threat. The win snapped a four-game Raptors losing streak and improved Toronto’s record to 16-25 while Miami fell to 24-17. Trent Jr. led the Raptors with 28 points while RJ Barrett had 26. The Raptors shot 20-of-38 from three.

The game topped off an emotional day at Scotiabank Arena — not the least of which because Rajakovic and Raptors assistants Ivo Simovic and Jama Mahlalela were grieving the sudden death of Golden State Warriors assistant Dejan Milojevic. For Rajakovic and Simovic, Milojevic was an old friend from the Serbian basketball community, for Mahlalela a former co-worker with Golden State.

"I knew Dejan since I was a teenager," Rajakovic said. "He was a role model as a player, as a man, as a husband, as a coach — somebody that I really admired and have a lot of respect for."

For the Raptors the challenge is moving on without Siakam, one of the most beloved players in franchise history. Not making it easier is that the return feels a little underwhelming, though there’s good reason for that.

“I think [Raptors president Masai Ujiri] was in a tough spot,” said one league insider. “He was worried that if he waited the offers might get worse.”

As I covered in an earlier piece, the gist of how the Raptors and Siakam arrived here is that the team never wanted to sign him to a deal longer than three years or more than 30 per cent of the salary cap. That was the deal they offered on the eve of the 2022-23 season that Siakam rejected, and they never really moved off of it. Siakam wanted more, believed he deserved more but in the end will have to get it from another team. Chances are after he converts enough lobs and lay-ups engineered from Pacers maestro Tyrese Haliburton, signing a long-term deal with Indiana this summer might seem like a good idea.

If the Pacers keep Siakam it will be one of the best deals a franchise could ever make: An all-NBA player in his prime who is a strong stylistic fit for draft capital they didn’t want and a player they didn’t need.

Not bad.

The Raptors return? Not so good. Time will tell if the Raptors erred by not trading Siakam at the trade deadline a year ago or this past summer. Perhaps in that context Toronto could have got at least one good young player in return for a player who ranks fifth in franchise history in both points and assists. We’ll never know.

In lieu of players, the Pacers included first-round picks, which is normally a good thing, except in this case two of the picks are in the 2024 draft which is universally acknowledged as being largely bereft of difference-making players, and that’s at the top of the draft. Right now the picks the Raptors got from Indiana are projected to be 20th and 27th overall. The Raptors did get a lightly protected first in 2026 — the pick transfers as long as it’s not in the top four of what is projected to be a strong draft — though the betting odds would favour the Pacers still being pretty good at that stage, so most likely it’s a mid-round first at best.

But overall it’s worth remembering that a year ago when the Raptors surprised most by being buyers at the trade deadline and acquiring Jakob Poeltl for a top-six protected pick in 2024 their logic at that time was the draft was a weak one so not much was lost, and besides, Toronto was confident that with Poeltl anchoring a lineup featuring an all-star guard (Fred VanVleet), an all-NBA defender (OG Anunoby), an all-NBA forward (Siakam) and the reigning rookie of the year (Scottie Barnes) they wouldn’t be anywhere near the bottom six in the league and all they would have given up was late first-round pick in a poor draft.

Well, those calculations didn’t exactly pan out. The draft remains weak, but as it stands now there is a very real possibility the Raptors will finish poorly enough this season to pick sixth and and their former all-star point guard and all-NBA defender and all-NBA forward are all out the door.

"That was the last piece right?” said Raptors forward Chris Boucher, the only player remaining from the championship team and now — in his sixth season — the Raptors' longest-tenured player. “It definitely feels different. A new era. I loved those guys, OG, Pascal, Fred. I grew up with them. I got here, I was just a young guy and they helped me a lot. So it’s definitely going to be weird for a couple of days, but we’ll adjust. I wish Pascal and all of them the best. I’ll be watching Indiana, the Knicks, Houston, every team that they’re on and try to do the best I can while I’m here.”

Ujiri, general manager Bobby Webster and their front office team have built up a tremendous amount of equity in the Toronto marketplace. Seven playoff appearances in eight seasons and a championship in 2019 is a heck of a bankroll.

So we’ll give the benefit of the doubt here. No matter how weak the draft, there are star players in them. Two-time MVP Nikola Jokic was the 41st pick in 2014. Two-time Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard was taken 15th in 2011 and two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo was taken 15th in a very weak 2013 draft. The Raptors now have multiple chances to get lucky.

As well the possibility exists that the Raptors could use some of their new-found draft capital to help add more NBA-ready talent. Toronto could package picks and any combination of Trent Jr., Schroder, Thad Young or Otto Porter Jr., into larger deals for players with term on teams that are trying to get off some money. Bruce Brown is a useful player who won a championship with Denver a season ago. He can’t be aggregated in a deal but among some of the NBA personnel at Scotiabank Arena last night the consensus was that the 27-year-old jack-of-all-trades would have trade value at the deadline for a contender.

All of which is to say, there’s not much point in making a declaration about the return on this deal until the entirety of it is understood. Boring, but true.

But there’s a very real possibility that Siakam will have been traded for a bag full of nothing.

Regardless, losing Siakam is a blow that shouldn’t be taken lightly. The Raptors could draft and develop a lot of players before they find another late first-round pick who carves a career out of nothing the way he did.

It might never happen, it almost never does. But it did here, and the Raptors have a championship banner to show for it and a generation of fans have memories they’ll keep forever.

Siakam deserves plenty of thanks for that.