Raptors Rookie Pascal Siakam Has Been Thrown into the Fire, and Survived

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

Pascal Siakam had all of 15 minutes of Las Vegas Summer League action under his belt when he went face-to-face with Kevin Durant. This was the first game that anyone, anywhere, stood opposite the former MVP in a Golden State Warriors uniform. And here was Siakam, the 22-year-old late first-round pick, tasked with stopping perhaps the second-best player on the planet in his first NBA preseason game. Durant caught the ball above the right elbow, drove to his left, and was met at the rim by the rookie, who stayed with him the entire way and turned the shot away off the backboard.

As far as early tests go, Siakam aced this one. It also served as a nice, quick affirmation of what got him to this point.

"From Vancouver, the first game, I was all nervous. It was the first time you out there on the court, you know," he recalls. "As a rookie, every possession that you make on the court as a young guy is a comment. It's not like you have all the time—every possession is important, and when you make a play like that it helps you out. It just gives you the confidence to keep going and keep playing the way you playing. It means that you're doing something right, and that always helps."

The preseason is designed for learning moments like that, but it's not as if Siakam's introduction to the league got easier when the regular season rolled around. With Jared Sullinger set to miss several months following foot surgery, Siakam heard his named called with the starting lineup on opening night. He's started each of the Toronto Raptors' six games to date, and while there has been the expected ups and downs, he's largely been a revelation. Averaging 18.3 minutes, Siakam's providing quality defense across multiple positions, leaking out in transition for easy baskets, and attacking the glass at both ends.

Durant was an early litmus test for his readiness on the defensive end, and the Raptors have had no choice but to continue to measure Siakam against a host of different opponents.

"I think they call it baptism by fire," head coach Dwane Casey said Sunday.

The Raptors opened their season against a Pistons team with multiple talented combo-forwards in Marcus Morris and Tobias Harris, and so Siakam spent his first game doing a lot of face-guarding and pushing on the block. Two nights later, the defending champions visited, providing a much different test with one of the league's premiere stretch fours in Kevin Love. In that game, Siakam was asked to scramble around the perimeter, showing off his lateral quickness and close-out speed. There was also the presence of LeBron James, who commands a nation to even have a chance of slowing him down. The enormous, bruising Denver Nuggets came in next, and in case that size wasn't a tall enough task, the Sacramento Kings strolled through with Rudy Gay and Kosta Koufos splitting time at power forward on Sunday. Siakam even spent some time as a small-ball center in that one, and the Kings employ a pretty notable All-Star at the pivot in DeMarcus Cousins.

If there's a common thread between the opposing players Siakam's been asked to guard, it's that they've been wildly inconsistent in stylistic terms. One possession, he's back-tracking against a wing driving north-south, the next he's helping off a shooter in the pick-and-pop and recovering back, and the next he's getting posted up. All the while, Siakam's come out looking even better than advertised as a multi-faceted defender, well ahead of the expected timeline.

"It just helps me show my versatility, being able to guard different types of players," Siakam said before tip-off against the Kings. "I'm excited. Everything's a challenge and everything about this league is a challenge for me, and now that I'm here, I'm ready to take on every challenge every night, whoever it is, and try to figure out what type of player I wanna be in the league."

Consider the teammate sharing those matchups with him at power forward impressed.

"He's being thrown into the fire from the jump," Patrick Patterson adds. "He's guarding different types of guys with different games, different bodies, different mindsets, so his basketball mindset, his defensive presence changes every single game pretty much. He's got to learn to adapt and change, and he's been doing a great job at it."

Though most of the attention has (rightfully) focused on Siakam's defense, Sunday's career-high 10 points provided an opportunity for him to show something at the other end, too. He's learning quickly to harness his speed as a weapon in the open court, and while buckets in the flow of the offense have been scarce, he was able to take Cousins to the hole (Siakam would later call it "lucky," because it's important to stay humble).

While he admits the game is still moving fast for him as he adjusts to the speed and talent of the NBA, getting to face an array of different players, many of whom he was just watching on TV a few months ago, is helping to expedite the learning process.

"It's going to help Jak (Jakob Poeltl) and Pascal tremendously," Casey said. "Starts against Rudy Gay, starts against an experienced player like Koufos, an experienced player like Cousins is a situation where it's going to help."

That's the hope: While the injuries to Sullinger and now Jonas Valanciunas are a hit in the short term, the Raptors reaped the benefits of a similar situation with Norman Powell a season ago. If the rookie bigs can take a few extra steps forward and the team can manage to stay competitive through that, then they'll be better for it later in the season, or if either is called upon in the postseason.

Meanwhile, the types of mistakes Siakam might make are the good kind, if such a thing exists. Casey is fond of requesting mistakes be "hard mistakes" borne of hustle and effort, and Siakam's early miscues have definitely been of that variety. So long as the effort is there, especially on the defensive end, his teammates are confident he can succeed.

"That makes up for all of the mistakes," DeMarre Carroll says. "You just come in, play hard. You don't worry about anything. You don't worry about scoring. You just worry about playing defense."

It's not as if the Raptors have any choice but to turn to Siakam right now, anyway, short of tasking a struggling Carroll with more minutes at the four. Still, it's encouraging that Siakam's answering the call so well early on, and in Casey's estimation, the best way to learn is by doing. For his part, Siakam's confident he'll come out the other side of this trial-by-fire unscathed.

"It's a lot. Coming in, I didn't know I would be thrown out there this early. I knew it would be a challenge. But I'm just trying to stick with whatever the team wants me to do," Siakam says. "At the end of the day, if I do that, I will be all right."