The 2020-21 season has gotten off to a relatively slow start for the Toronto Raptors, who entered the season with lofty expectations but now find themselves 2.0 games below .500.
From a developmental standpoint, though, the Raptors have plenty of things to be optimistic about: Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam’s improved playmaking and mid-range shooting, OG Anunoby being even more efficient on higher usage, Norman Powell and Chris Boucher becoming dependable scorers night in and night out, and De’Andre Bembry’s emergence as a connector off the bench.
While we don’t know which direction the Raptors’ front office will go at the trade deadline, we know that the VanVleet-Siakam-Anunoby core will be around for a long time, and we know that regardless of which way the team goes at the deadline, this core is simply too good to bottom out. The team will have to strike a delicate balance between valuing winning while also giving their key players room to grow. With that in mind, Pascal Siakam needs to shoot more threes, especially off the dribble.
For whatever reason, Siakam’s touch has been off all season. He is shooting worse at the rim (61.0 percent) and from three-point range (29.5 percent) than he did last season, but what is troublesome for his development is that he has pretty much stopped taking threes unless they are wide open, shooting just 4.1 threes per game, instead taking more long 2s. Last season, Siakam shot 6.1 threes per game and hit 35.9 percent over the course of 60 games, including 34.0 percent on pull-up threes. The season before that, he connected on 36.9 percent of his threes, so there is a long enough track record of Siakam being a good three-point shooter to assume that the percentages should even out if he keeps shooting.
As the No. 1 option on the team — and the player with by far the most offensive-upside in part because of his ability to knock down threes — Siakam needs to be more aggressive from downtown. If he starts connecting on threes, Siakam and the Raptors will immediately become a lot tougher to defend, especially in the playoffs. And it’s not just because the Raptors will have one more player to hit threes and therefore better spacing and more lineup versatility; it’s also because Siakam connecting on threes could eventually force defences to go above screens or switch them rather than go under them, opening up a world of possibilities for the Raptors.
Right now, teams are going under Siakam pick-and-rolls when Siakam is the ball-handler. Not that Siakam is the ball-handler in pick-and-roll very often (only 11.8 percent of his offence), but when he is, teams are simply going under and daring him to shoot. More often than not, he isn’t shooting, allowing his defender to stay in front of him and the action to stall. Still, Siakam is scoring 0.93 points per possession as a pick-and-roll ball-handler, so there is a solid foundation to build from. Defences might not change their coverage this season, but the only way to make them change it going forward is by taking more threes when teams go under screens, as he does in the video below from the preseason:
If Siakam could consistently punish players for going under screens, defences would have an impossible decision to make: go above the screen and allow Siakam to get downhill momentum, which is when he is at his best as a scorer, or switch the screen and allow Siakam to target a mismatch, whether it’s a big man he can take off the dribble or a guard he can take into the post. There’s more examples of this on our channel which shows where he’s solid with the ball and where he needs improvement:
The inverted screen with Kyle Lowry or VanVleet screening for Siakam is the most interesting option because it would force a smaller guard onto Siakam, who is at his best when posting-up with his back to the basket, at least from a playmaking perspective. Siakam is posting up 4.8 times per game (14.3 percent of possessions), shooting 50.0 percent in post-ups or 0.99 points per possession. He is passing out of 45.5 percent of post-ups, with an assist percentage of 13.1 in those scenarios (more often getting the hockey assist). It’s not that he should necessarily be posting up more, only that he should do it more selectively, targeting smaller players rather than guys his own size.
Sending Siakam screen help from Lowry or VanVleet would allow him to target smaller players to take into the post. Siakam is at his most comfortable reading a defence and manipulating help defenders from there. If they defend him one-on-one, Siakam can quickly flip his hips in either direction, take one dribble, and get to the bucket. If they send a double-team towards him, which teams have been doing all season when Siakam has a mismatch, he can make the right pass and make it quickly enough that the Raptors can move the ball and find a good shot before the defence properly rotates. But none of this will matter if Siakam keeps hesitating to shoot the three and teams continue going under screens.
While post-ups may no longer be a big part of NBA offences, this is something the Raptors could go to at the end of games (they have been really bad in crunch time this season) and in the playoffs when the games slow down and points are harder to come by. It’s something LeBron James has used in playoff series after playoff series in order to slow down the game and dictate the offence. And while Siakam isn’t nearly as good of a playmaker as James, he has become really good at reading the defence with his back to his basket and making every pass from the post-up position. Look back to last season’s series against the Boston Celtics, who played a small guard in Kemba Walker on VanVleet. If Siakam was able to force the switch onto Walker, Boston would have been forced to double the post, and that could have been a relatively easy source of offence for the Raptors, who struggled to score throughout the series. Sometimes, the alternative is simply to not play a bad defensive guard like Walker when he is being targeted, which is still a win for the opposing team. It’s just another way for the Raptors to dictate the style of play and opposing personnel.
Siakam will always have his limitations as a No. 1 option, but he needs to start shooting more threes and get his percentage back up to the mid-thirties to open up more options for him and his team. The Raptors also need to give him more help on offence, especially in regards to sending him screen help so he can operate as a pick-and-roll ball-handler. In VanVleet and Lowry, the Raptors have two of the best screening guards in the league. It’s time they make better use of them and give Siakam the freedom he needs to reach his full potential.
