If you haven’t heard already, the Toronto Raptors have traded Pascal Siakam to the Indiana Pacers for Bruce Brown, Jordan Nwora, Kira Lewis and draft picks (two of which are in 2024).
Now, I’m not going to talk about who I think the winners and losers of the trade are. There are enough of those analyses online already.
For this article, I want to talk about Siakam’s legacy in Toronto.
But before I get to that, I will say that this move is great for Siakam. Playing alongside Tyrese Haliburton and Myles Turner will make the game easier for him.
Haliburton’s wizard-like playmaking and great scoring will take the pressure off of Siakam.
Turner will make the defensive end easier for Spicy P by taking on opposing centers and providing elite rim protection (this isn’t something that the Raptors lacked, as they had Jakob Poeltl, but Turner is a much better defender).
Okay, now that that’s out of the way…
I think Siakam is one of the greatest Raptors of all time.
He was the Raptors’ second-best player during their championship run in 2019. Additionally, in subsequent seasons, he was the team’s best player, despite his herky-jerky movement.
But for some reason, the unorthodox style worked for him.
He averaged over 20 points, 7 rebounds and 4 assists a game (even when he played with a hurt shoulder) and was an All-Star twice and an All-NBA player twice.
He’s also third in rebounds and fifth in points, assists and games played on the Raptors’ leaderboard.
However, the Raptors didn’t do well with him as the primary guy -they only made the playoffs twice since their title win.
Thus, the organization had to make changes.
This way, Siakam can get a fresh start with a playoff team and, of more importance to the Raptors’ brass, they can rebuild.
The only crappy thing for Siakam is that he didn’t get traded earlier, like before the Play-In Tournament, so he could’ve won the cash prize.
But jokes aside, I hope he has a great career with the Pacers.
And I hope whatever the Raptors are cooking up will work out for them, too.
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