Would the weather have done its business on the Toronto side? As Nick Nurse mentioned when he was questioned on the subject, Pascal Siakam assured that the hatchet was buried with his coach after the episode that occurred at the end of March, which had earned him a fine of 50 000 dollars.
After a setback in Cleveland, during which he was kept on the bench in the fourth quarter, the Cameroonian would have expressed his dissatisfaction using a rather flowery vocabulary. Almost six months later, the incident is definitively closed.
“We talked about the difficulties we had collectively, because we couldn’t win far from Toronto. It was just frustrating to lose, these are things that happen when you have two people who care about winning. You know, you go out into the field and sometimes you get frustrated. I think it was nothing more than that, just the frustration of not being able to accomplish what we thought we could do and it was just a disagreement. We passed over this a long time ago ”, he explained.
An incident that fed the rumors of departure
The various rumors evoking a possible departure from Toronto have regularly recalled this incident to justify a possible change of course for Pascal Siakam. Not enough to destabilize him so far.
“It was fun to see people coming back to it to fuel the rumors. Let’s move on, it was a disagreement, everything is back to normal between us. For Nick, the franchise and for me, the most important thing now is to focus on how we’re going to get back to winning ways. We want to regain the status that we think is ours. That’s all that occupies our mind ”, he added.
For the time being, Pascal Siakam has already made it known through his agent that he was preparing to attack the coming season with Toronto, remaining however aware that everything can very quickly move very quickly in the NBA.
“There was never anything concrete, nor anything that could have alarmed me. It was limited to: “Such and such a team likes Pascal”. And if something serious had come up, I’ve been in the league enough years to understand that this is a business, and I would have understood it. I know what it is. I’ve been close to guys like Jakob (Poeltl) and DeMar (DeRozan), I’m not naive. If it comes up, I know I have to respect and accept the choice of Toronto ”.
| Pascal Siakam | Percentage | Rebounds | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Season | Team | MJ | Min | Tirs | 3pts | LF | Off | Def | Until | Pd | Fte | Int | Bp | Ct | Pts |
| 2016-17 | TOR | 55 | 16 | 50.2 | 14.3 | 68.8 | 1.2 | 2.2 | 3.4 | 0.3 | 2.0 | 0.5 | 0.6 | 0.8 | 4.2 |
| 2017-18 | TOR | 81 | 21 | 50.8 | 22.0 | 62.1 | 1.0 | 3.5 | 4.5 | 2.0 | 2.1 | 0.8 | 0.8 | 0.5 | 7.3 |
| 2018-19 | TOR | 80 | 32 | 54.9 | 36.9 | 78.5 | 1.6 | 5.3 | 6.9 | 3.1 | 3.0 | 0.9 | 1.9 | 0.7 | 16.9 |
| 2019-20 | TOR | 60 | 35 | 45.3 | 35.9 | 79.2 | 1.1 | 6.3 | 7.3 | 3.5 | 2.8 | 1.0 | 2.5 | 0.9 | 22.9 |
| 2020-21 | TOR | 56 | 36 | 45.5 | 29.7 | 82.7 | 1.7 | 5.5 | 7.2 | 4.5 | 3.1 | 1.1 | 2.3 | 0.7 | 21.4 |
| Total | 332 | 28 | 48.8 | 32.5 | 78.2 | 1.3 | 4.6 | 5.9 | 2.7 | 2.6 | 0.9 | 1.6 | 0.7 | 14.3 | |
