Pascal Siakam's scoring and creation emergence

Amit Mann and Katie Heindl discuss stats showing how Pascal Siakam has developed as a scorer and passer this season. Listen to the full episode on the "Raptors Over Everything" podcast feed.

Video Transcript

AMIT MANN: This season, my final point, we haven't really talked about them, but because it's kind of obvious, but it's Pascal Siakam.

KATIE HEINDL: Yeah, yeah.

AMIT MANN: Isn't he incredible?

KATIE HEINDL: Yeah, he's incredible. We love it.

AMIT MANN: Yeah, and I was just going to point out a few stats here that I think are notable. So last season in isolation, he averaged 0.90 points per possession, pretty good number actually. That's where Giannis is this year. This season, 2022-2023, 1.04, big ups there.

Speaking of big ups. His pull ups, 6% better on pull ups this season. We're seeing those shots that he hits, the step backs, the floaters, step back, fadeaways, all this stuff on different spots on the court, free throw line, extended baseline, it's all good. His unassisted field goals made is up 8%. Love that kind of stuff. And again, assist percentage is up 12%.

We all know we're seeing what Pascal Siakam is doing as a scorer as a person who occupies defenses, and just like ball's going over here, ball's going over here, open man here, open man here, he is a cerebral scorer, high volume scorer, creator. He's doing all that kind of stuff. And when you look, I like to reflect a little bit on a person like Pascal, because his journey has been so cool.

Every single time a person, a media member, a fan has tried to put a label on who he is, he's exceeded it. And he keeps on doing it. Love to see it.

KATIE HEINDL: Yeah, Yeah, no. I have notes on Pascal too. I think it's just like, I get-- I get a bit trepidatious to be like, oh, he's taken another leap, but he has. Again just because of like setting realistic expectations. But I think the biggest for me of what you said just in the way he is-- his like offensive production has changed, is that I think he's learned to flow offensively without getting frustrated.

When he's double teamed, he'll switch to assist, or he moves to more of like an outside game. When he's playing man to man he finds a lot of opportunities to penetrate the paint. These are things that, when I talked before about Scottie Barnes having to like metabolize all this information and be able to like put it together and deploy it in his game, that's what-- that's-- Pascal Siakam is the optimum of what that looks like.

He's someone who can just like move through the space, let the game come to him. He's able to manipulate the game in this way that we've never seen him do it before. And he looks so comfortable and joyful doing it. I mean like I don't know what more you could want right now. It's kind of one of these things where it's like just sit back and enjoy it.

AMIT MANN: Yeah. People laugh when he said, I want to be top five in the NBA. And well, I mean, I'm not sure if he's top five, but I mean, he's pretty damn close to being in that category.

KATIE HEINDL: Yeah, yeah.

AMIT MANN: I mean, if the first all-NBA team voting was happening today, you might see Pascal Siakam on there. So very cool for him. Hopefully that continues. And obviously Raptors get healthy, they start flourishing, they start stringing together some consistency, because, my god, the chaos has been a bit annoying. But that's how the Raptors operate.