SALT LAKE CITY—There’s a little bit of conflict within Pascal Siakam.
He lives for team success but has to revel in individual accomplishments and honours. And it was a delicate balancing act he had to pull off as he hung around with the best basketball players on Earth at the NBA’s all-star weekend.
The Raptors don’t have a particularly good record, nor a place among legitimate championship contenders, but Siakam is putting up historically good numbers. The former is the reason Eastern Conference coaches left him out of their all-star reserve selections. The latter — he is the only player in the East to be averaging 25 points, seven rebounds and six assists a game — made his addition as an injury replacement a no-brainer.