Pascal Siakam is Reaching Kawhi Leonard's Level of Unstoppability: His Jumper Makes Him 'As Hard to Guard as Anybody'

The Toronto Raptors are seeing Pascal Siakam turn into the kind of superstar Kawhi Leonard was back in 2018-19

Aaron Rose | Dec 27, 2022

Nick Turchiaro-USA TODAY Sports

There was a sense of inevitability when Kawhi Leonard got the ball back in those 2019 playoffs. No matter what was going on with everyone else, there was a calmness, a poise, and an understanding Leonard could create something out of nothing.

Take Game 7 against Philadelphia, for example. Leonard wasn't efficient. He was 16-for-39 from the field and unable to find much of a rhythm against the stifling 76ers defense. Still, while the rest of the team struggled in that slog of a game, it was Leonard who rose to the occasion, generating the offense for Toronto when nobody else could.

What Leonard did over those few months in the 2019 NBA playoffs may never be recreated in Toronto again. It solidified him as not just a top-five player in the league at the time, but as an all-time great. And yet, four years later, as Leonard makes his return to Toronto for the first time since 2019, the Raptors have a new man doing his very best to recreate that same kind of magic.

It's going to take a lot more games, wins, and playoff wins for Pascal Siakam to truly reach Leonard's level. Nobody is crowned a superstar 30 or so games into an NBA season. But when it comes to that feeling, the give-me-the-ball-and-get-out-of-the-way specialness that Leonard had, Siakam is getting close.

"I just think he’s got a tremendous amount of confidence in his ability to score the ball," Raptors coach Nick Nurse said of Siakam who was announced as the latest Eastern Conference Player of the Week. "He feels he can go a lot of directions, he can go outside, inside, he can drive and spin, he can stop and shoot the little step-back, all the stuff that he’s got is given him almost a complete package."

If isolation scoring is the metric of superstars, Siakam is among the league's best. He's generating 1.04 points per isolation possession, virtually identical to Leonard's 1.05 back in the 2018-19 regular season.

"At one point, you say he can only drive right and use his spin move and all those kinds of things. Now he might be more dangerous... probably equally as dangerous going each way which I think is huge," Nurse added. "It gives us a chance to tilt the floor in different ways and things like that to give him space to go either way."

The biggest difference between Siakam, Leonard, and almost every star player that's come through Toronto is that playmaking ability. While Siakam is deadly at getting to his spots and making teams pay inside the paint, his ability to make plays for others sets him apart. He's creating an extra 18.2 points per game with his passing, per NBA Stats, well above Leonard's 8.5 back in 2018-19, and more than any other Raptors player aside from Kyle Lowry since the stat began being tracked in 2013.

"The biggest thing – I keep talking about it – is his composure to make the right play. Make big buckets, make big passes, rebounding is up, assists are up," Nurse said.

You can hear the difference in the way Siakam talks these days. He thinks — rightly so — that he can get whatever he wants from the defense whenever he wants it. His elbow jumper is on par with Leonard's from 2018-19, he's finishing at a 62.7% clip within eight feet of the hoop, again, on par with Leonard, and he's doing it while getting assisted on just 34.4% of his buckets, a number lower than what Leonard had to deal with.

"He's carried us and done so much for us this year, he’s just been amazing," said Fred VanVleet. "He’s looking like one of the best players in the league on a nightly basis. We're running an entire offense through him and he's playing great defense when he’s available."

Siakam has accepted that mantle as The Guy. He's stepped into the void Leonard left in 2019, battled through the ups and downs of the COVID-19 pandemic, and has come out the other side a better player. He's not at Leonard's level yet and may never be, but if Leonard's unstoppability is what Siakam wants, he's getting there.

"If that jumper is going, he’s as hard to guard as anybody right now," VanVleet said.

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