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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO – Pascal Siakam isn’t broken, but he is lost, and finding his way back won’t be as simple as he had hoped.

After hitting a major roadblock last summer – his well-documented struggles in the NBA bubble – the Raptors’ all-star did what he knows best: he went to work.

Siakam spent the bulk of the league’s abbreviated off-season in the lab trying to rebuild himself as a basketball player, as he’s done so many times before. He intensified his already extensive training routine and added to his own personal support staff – all of it in the interest of getting himself right, mentally and physically, and coming back better than ever.

He even documented the process and turned it into a YouTube series – that’s how confident he was that it would yield the desired results. And why wouldn’t it?

Ever since he picked up a basketball and committed himself to the sport, he’s always been able to lean on his work ethic, drive, and of course, his talent to take him further than anybody ever thought he could go.

He’s had a storybook career, to this point, and bouncing back from this latest bout of adversity seemed like the logical next chapter.

So far, though, things haven’t gone according to plan, and the 26-year-old hasn’t handled his disappointment especially well.

While there are many reasons for Toronto’s 1-4 start to the campaign, Siakam’s play is firmly entrenched at the top of that list. In the four games he’s played, all losses, the fifth-year forward has averaged 16.5 points – 6.4 fewer than last season – on 40 per cent shooting and 28 per cent from three-point range. He’s fouled out of his last two contests and missed the one in between – the team’s lone win against the Knicks on New Year’ s Eve – after he was benched for disciplinary reasons.

"It’s just something we’re trying to work out here a little bit, and work it out early in the season and not let it prolong," head coach Nick Nurse said on Saturday, going into a bit more detail regarding Siakam’s punishment, while keeping the specific details of it in-house. "Just an expectation of how we want to play, not individually how anybody wants to play. But there are certain standards we want to set and he just needs to get on board with those. And he can do it, geeze, he can do it, it’s just maybe the first part of the process, but he can do it."

Although Nurse’s comments were ominous and seemed to suggest that there’s more to the story than we know, multiple sources have maintained that there isn’t – the decision to discipline Siakam was made after he left the court and went straight to the locker room with 25.6 seconds remaining in Tuesday’s loss to the 76ers. There was no profanity-laced post-game tirade, he didn’t toss a water cooler, throw a chair, or punch a hole into the wall, as other athletes have done in frustration over the years. Those things would have been out of character for the mild-mannered Siakam, anyway.

What could have influenced the action that Toronto took – as drastic as it seemed – was what happened in advance of Siakam walking off the floor that night in Philadelphia. With the Raptors’ lead dwindling in the fourth quarter, and frustration mounting, Siakam lost his composure. He committed a couple crucial turnovers down the stretch and was called for five fouls in the final seven minutes of the game.

Even on nights when his jumper isn’t falling or he’s not getting the benefit of the doubt from the officials – and those nights have been frequent dating back to last season’s restart – the expectation of Siakam, as a young leader and max contract player, is to find other ways to impact winning. That means sticking to the game plan, making good decisions with the ball and on defence, playing with energy, and rallying around his teammates.

It doesn’t come from a bad or knowingly selfish place, but when he allows his frustration to get the best of him, as he did on Tuesday, the Raptors feel like he’s putting himself and his own play ahead of the team. The message that they’re hoping to send is that they expect more of him.

Siakam spoke to team president Masai Ujiri, general manager Bobby Webster, and his teammates following Thursday’s benching and told them he’s ready to move forward and focus on winning. However, his performance in Saturday’s 120-116 loss to New Orleans wasn’t the response he, or the team, was looking for.

There were occasional glimpses of the old Siakam – the version that, prior to the pandemic, was one of the league’s brightest young stars. He’s shown flashes at various points throughout the early part of this season. He’ll string together a few strong defensive possessions, or shake off a defender with his signature spin move, like he did in the third quarter of the Pelicans game. But those moments are few and far between. They’re overshadowed by the defensive lapses, careless turnovers, missed jumpers, and negative body language.

One of Siakam’s goals during the off-season was to rediscover his joy for the game – something that he noticed was absent when he re-watched games from the bubble. He felt good coming into the new campaign and, by all accounts, he’s looked like his old self off the court and in practice. The problem is there’s been little joy in the way Siakam or the Raptors have started off the year.

"That’s the toughest part of it," said Siakam, who finished with 10 points, four rebounds and one assist against New Orleans. "Being out there, when you’re not winning, obviously it’s hard to be out there and smile and be happy."

On Saturday, he was too passive – kicking the ball out instead of attacking mismatches and looking to get to the rim, or to the free throw line. The whistle didn’t do him any favours, to be fair. He attempted just two free throws before fouling out in 25 minutes. After averaging 5.1 free throw attempts per game last season, he’s taken eight total in four contests this year.

"That’s a great question," said Siakam, asked what he could do to get to the line more often. "I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m trying to figure that out. I watch a lot of games and I watch a lot of other teams, and it’s tough when you go out there and don’t feel like you’re getting the whistle. But I got to finish through contact, continue to get better at that, being stronger at the rim. I don’t control the whistle, I don’t know what’s happening there, but I got to look at myself and find a way to get better at finishing at the rim and drawing two or three people and making the right pass."

The restart exposed some glaring holes in Siakam’s game, which wasn’t unexpected given that it was his first post-season experience in a new and expanded role. How he came back from it was always going to be more telling.

That other version of Siakam – the all-star and All-NBA player – is in there, somewhere. The cause for optimism is that he’s only 26, and it’s still early enough in the season to turn things around. There’s time for him to find himself, which would go a long way in helping the Raptors find themselves.

The hot start to his bounce-back campaign isn’t going to happen, at least not in the way he imagined it would during the off-season. His immediate on-court response to last week’s benching probably wasn’t anywhere close to what he envisioned, either. Maybe Monday’s rematch with Boston – the team that shut him down in the playoffs four months ago – will be the spark he's needed, or maybe not.

Getting over this hurdle and taking the next step as a player is unlike any other challenge he’s faced in his young career, and part of it is understanding and accepting that things don’t always go according to the plan. Narratively, his ascension from Cameroon to the pros has been so compelling that it’s easy to forget, growth isn’t always linear.

However, now that he’s in the first season of his lucrative four-year extension, worth in excess of $130 million, you can understand why patience is waning for the Raptors and their fans.