When Pascal Siakam announced his arrival at the NBA Finals with a 32-point outburst in a Game 1 win, he left more than one observer agog.
Not only had he led the Toronto Raptors to a landmark victory over the vaunted Golden State Warriors, this while frustrating the best efforts of Draymond Green, only the 2016-17 NBA defensive player of the year. Siakam, once again, had also defied the conventional bounds of what we’ve come to expect from the pro athlete improvement curve.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Nick Nurse, the Raptors head coach, said at the time.