skones wrote:pingpongrac wrote:Imagine saying offence and defence aren't equal then throwing out names like Holiday, Bam, Gobert and Davis (lol, the guy has missed almost half of the Lakers games the last 3 seasons and isn't near as good as he used to be?) as players that are clearly better than Siakam
presumably because of their defence. Not to mention guys like Mitchell, Booker and Towns aren't clearly better than Siakam. Middleton and Beal absolutely do not have any case over Siakam at this point while DeRozan is so bad defensively that he doesn't have much of a case either. Again, Siakam has absolutely been a top 20 player THIS SEASON. Give me a list of players that can put up 30+ points or dish out ~10 assists depending on how teams defend him while being solid on the boards and a very good defender.
The bubble is absolutely not a lot to go off of. As I said in my other post, the Celtics/Raptors series was the most defensive series of the playoffs by far and stars from both teams struggled mightily. It was a 7-game sample against one team whereas Toronto's Championship run was 24 games against 4 very different teams. It is mindboggling that you think the Championship run doesn't mean significantly more than a single series under unusual circumstances.
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First of all, saying offense and defense aren't equal and then saying certain players are better than Siakam? You're treating that as a contradiction when it's very clearly not. As I said earlier, there are levels to these things, and point blank, full stop, dead ass, whichever term you want to use, Pascal Siakam doesn't live in the same realm aas guys like Holiday, Bam, and Gobert on the defensive end. (PS. Holiday finished this season shooting over 50% from the field, over 40% from three, and 7 assists. I was a Holiday hater when we dealt for him, he's exceeded all of my expectations this season and has had a season that rises above all of his others)
As for this "give me a list" stuff again. You're not looking at skillset, how it translates to the floor, and how it fits into a winning team. It's why you're running around in circles lauding counting numbers as the basic case. Guy isn't a superstar, he's not top tier talent, and everyone knows it outside of Toronto.
You just casually doubled assist output for Siakam, added a bunch of points, and ended up throwing out other qualifiers to narrow the field when Siakam doesn't even fit the qualifiers you put into place. Siakam scored 23 a night in 38 minutes a contest. There are guys ACTUALLY dropping almost 30 a night in this league. You're talking about single seasons and just throwing out a guy like Derozan without objectively looking at what he's done this season.
I have no clue what stance you're trying to take in regards to offence vs. defence. I know Siakam isn't as impactful of a defender as Gobert or Bam, but he is a significantly better offensive player than both of them...and in previous posts you keep harping on the fact that being a great offensive player is more important. As MANY people have also said, Siakam's impact numbers – especially on the defensive end – don't truly capture how incredible he has been this season. In the first 10 games that Siakam missed, Toronto got off to hot start then they were pretty terrible throughout the next ~20 games because Siakam was noticeably slow and OG/Achiuwa/Birch all missed significant time with injuries. As soon as Siakam started to get back into shape and Toronto was regaining their health, he went on a tear and was a very impactful player on both ends of the floor for the last ~60 games.
I said Siakam is capable of scoring 30+ points or dishing out ~10 assists depending on how teams are defending him on a given night. I didn't say he is averaging 30 points and 10 assists night in, night out lol. Just look at what he did in the last 15 games against mostly playoff competition; 25 PTS and 10 AST vs Suns, 33 PTS and 7 AST vs Nuggets, 31 PTS and 3 AST vs Clippers, 26 PTS and 5 AST vs Sixers, 22 PTS and 4 AST vs Bulls (Raptors blown out on B2B), 35 PTS and 6 AST vs Cavs, 40 PTS and 1 AST vs Celtics, 12 PTS and 13 AST vs Wolves, 29 PTS and 5 AST vs Heat, 31 PTS and 6 AST vs Hawks, 37 PTS and 12 AST vs Sixers. Those are star numbers and he has consistently been having those type of performances against the best teams in the league all season long while leading Toronto to numerous big wins.
I think you're of the illusion that Siakam is the same player he was in 19/20 (when he was already 2nd team All-NBA and clearly a top 15-20 player before COVID/the bubble) or 20/21 (when he, and the Raptors as a whole, played every game away from home and most of which without fans). Siakam has dramatically improved his midrange game and playmaking abilities as well as his overall feel for the game which has turned him into a legit offensive force. He's basically guaranteed to score 20+ points and dish out ~5 assists while being the focal point of the offence that constantly draws double teams – or even triple teams. In fact, Siakam is just outside the top 10 in double teams drawn (11th, .01 possessions per game behind DeRozan and Garland, but he sports a higher % of double team possessions than both) and he is tied with Luka and Trae for 2nd in PPP. He makes teams pay regardless of how they are defending him because he has more counters than a spin move now (a little push shot/floater, much better with his left hand, etc.) and his three-ball is back up to a respectable level (34% after a down year last season) while he can get the ball to open shooters/cutters due to his combination of height, vision and passing abilities.
Siakam averaged 22.8/8.5/5.3 for the season after coming off shoulder surgery. The league as a whole only had 10 other players average at least 20 PTS, 7 REB, 4 AST (all categories which Siakam was comfortably above the threshold) and Siakam turned the ball over the 2nd least among those players (0.1 more than Murray and 0.2 less than Tatum) while also being arguably being a top 3 defender among them (behind Embiid and Giannis, on the same level as Tatum and Murray). All of the players that hit those thresholds are considered elite aside from Randle and Murray (who at this stage of his career is making the leap) and Siakam was right there with them while leading a young team to a 34-16 record over his last 50 games played. If you want to point to Siakam's MPG as the reason for his high box score stats, I think it's just as important to look at USG% too. Luka (37%), Embiid (37%), Giannis (35%), LeBron (32%), Jokic (32%), Tatum (32%) and Durant (31%) did more on a per-minute basis, but they also had a significantly higher USG% than Siakam (26%) while Randle (29%), Harden (27%) and Murray (27%) were also above Siakam in usage rate.
At this point, it is clear that you either have no clue what you are talking about (probably because you haven't seen many Raptors games outside of the few that Siakam dominated the Bucks down the stretch) or you're just trolling.
