Jonathan Lethem’s The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye is early, raw work, but it carries a punch. In one story, Vanilla Dunk, basketball players no longer use their own abilities but wear exo-suits that replicate Hall of Fame players. The protagonist has the suit of some unimportant Hall of Famer, but he doesn’t always use it. He’s better in many ways than his suit. Had he been born earlier, when basketball players used their own games, he would have been a star. Rich. Famous. Successful. A Hall of Famer in his own right. Instead he was mostly a bench warmer.
People are often born in the wrong time. Would have fit better elsewhere. For example: That guy in the Michael Crichton novel who always wanted to hit people with a battleaxe and so stayed in the Middle Ages after a time-traveling romp. It’s not just psychopaths; it could be true of all of us in one way or another.
But the player of whom it might be most true in today’s NBA is Pascal Siakam.
Siakam is a post-up miracle. Truly, he is a marvel of talent and ability, fluidity and creativity. If Siakam had entered the league 30 or 40 years earlier, he would have had offenses built around his skills for more than a decade. Songs sung about his greatness, statues erected depicting his spin move. The Hall of Fame, a certainty.
Alas, Siakam entered the era of the NBA least committed to the post (for now) and most committed to the 3-point shot. His greatest strength is de-emphasized, and his greatest weakness is over-emphasized. And yet.
The numbers describing a Siakam post-up are comical. You look at them and laugh. Truly, laugh. Ha. They are that good. A possession, excluding offensive rebounds, that features a Siakam post-up scores 1.222 points per chance (PPC). The best offense in the league scores 1.093 PPC. (That’s the Indiana Pacers.) Ha ha. Funny, see?
Of course, it’s folly comparing one player’s best action with an entire team’s whole offense. That’s comparing apples and the concept of fruit trees. So how does Siakam compare to other post-up artists around the league?
Among 34 players with at least 20 post-ups this season, Siakam is averaging the fourth-highest PPC on such possessions. When he draws double teams, which occurs on a very high 25 percent of his post-ups, his PPC skyrockets to 1.667. Also: Among 91 players with at least five post-ups, according to Second Spectrum, Siakam draws the tied-10th-highest rate of double teams on those plays. Defenders help liberally onto Siakam, in part because he is so deadly, and in part because he has so little shooting around him on such plays. Siakam plays on a team that does little to make his post-ups better. He went out and achieved, anyway. He has been this good for a long time; last year, he ranked sixth in post-up PPC.
And the players with higher PPC on post-ups than Siakam are frequently finishing plays, not starting them. Kristaps Porzingis, Alperen Sengun, and Anthony Davis often play on lineups full of shooting (or, at least with more than Siakam), and they frequently end possessions in the post after others create advantages. If you just look at players who touch the ball in the post in the first six seconds of the shot clock, Siakam has the single highest PPC in the league, at 1.387. Ha ha ha. Funny. He might be the best post player in basketball right now. Even if you include Nikola Jokic. Maybe.
His footwork on post-ups is immaculate. Look. Watch. Look at this footwork. Marvel.
Drive. Bump. Set up another bump. But whoops, I’m not where you thought I was. (He makes it, by the way; this was goaltending.) The whole time, his little ballet feet are chewing inches, hungry hippos, forward forward forward. The fat guy at the movie theater colonizing your armrest one millimeter at a time, every time your arm leaves for popcorn. Little hungry feet.
While his feet are eating, his body warps across space like an agent in the Matrix in bullet time. Twirl. Chomp. Twirl. Chomp. Oh, and his arms find the time and touch to drop the ball off the glass, molasses slow. He’s like a jazz drummer, polyrhythms across his different body parts.
Then the next play, chomp chomp, his feet get to eating, bump, bump, but whereas he spun the last time, now he’s suddenly hitting the brakes and fading away. Do you know how hard it is for players to create uncontested 8-footers in the NBA in a crowded half-court? This is without fancy dribbling or anything, just chompy feet, a watery torso, and the power of deceleration.
Second Spectrum also keeps stats on post-ups that begin with the player dribbling into them. Are you ready? Ready to laugh? Ha. That PPC, it’s 1.800, the highest, obviously, among players with 10 or more. When Giannis Antetkounmpo drives for a dunk? The PPC there? 1.857. So, Siakam dribbling into a post-up is the same as Antetokounmpo driving for a dunk. Ha ha.
There’s no flaw to his game when he dribbles into post-ups. The interior passing: Ha. He’s doling out layups to teammates with the casual aim of this guy. These are high-value assists. Keep the dribble alive, chompy chompy feet, drift closer, engage a second defender, then whittle into a good passing angle. This is planning ahead. Organization. Court mapping in time and space. Manipulation.
Single coverage? Bucket. Double-team? Often, escape dribble to force the double away (or create more space for a pass), then reset, attack again, bucket.
If he needs to move faster on that stepback because his defender is longer than he is, he can do that with total ease, too. His bag is deep and full of different paces. And those little hungry feet don’t confine their dinner time to the 20-foot-to-10-foot space. Siakam can also get a deep post touch and bump and twirl his way to the front of the rim. Slinky shoulders, just like the rest of him.
The spin. Obviously the spin. We all know the spin. But the counter spin is an answer, something he’s turned to frequently this year. He can go both directions with the same footwork on either side, which means if you expect his weight to go one way, boom, he is often going just the other. You simply can’t sit on anything against him in the post. Expect anything, and you may as well expect failure.
These are the post-ups of a master. An artist. These are the post-up buckets of someone who has perfected his craft. Like Lethem’s character in Vanilla Dunk, Siakam might have been born in the wrong era. You drop this ability into 1975 and — okay, Siakam isn’t unseating Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for MVP or anything, but you get the point. This is a skill that a championship-level offense could build around. Back then.
Now? Hard to say. We’ve done this dance before, and it’s pretty clear the Raptors aren’t going to build a team to maximize Siakam. That is what it is at this point. No point wondering if they should. But that doesn’t make Siakam’s abilities in the post any less compelling. He is unique and uniquely impressive in the post this season. And yet Siakam is 19th in post-up frequency right now, which is high, but certainly not as high as you might expect considering it’s by a wide margin Toronto’s best half-court initiation option, by the numbers. He ran a higher frequency last year. Either way, it won’t lead to a championship, and it won’t even lead to a whole lot of wins for Toronto. But, at the very least, Siakam in the post can lead to enjoyment for the viewer, marveling at his artistry. Yes, even in this era.
