Pascal Siakam wins East Player of the Week

Put this Pascal Siakam news in perspective: two years ago, as a rookie on the Toronto Raptors, the fanbase (myself included!) could not wait to get the young 6’9” forward out of the starting lineup. Via necessity, Siakam started 38 games that season for Toronto before Serge Ibaka and P.J. Tucker came to town in a trade and sent him straight to the then-D-League.

Today, Siakam has started almost every game for the 12-1 Raptors, the best team in the league. For his efforts: Pascal has been named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week for November 5th. What a difference two years makes.

After another 3-0 week for the Raptors, Siakam put up 20 points per game (a team-high), plus 4.3 rebounds and 1.7 assists. For the apparent fun of it, Pascal also shot 72 percent from the field, including a neat 3-of-8 from three (all of those threes came in that game against the Knicks, but still).

There are paeons to Siakam everywhere now, with a bandwagon that is full to bursting (per sources). My current favourite celebration is this little selection of spin moves that we’ve been seeing more and more as of late.

Siakam joins an august batch of Raptors who have also won the Player of the Week award. DeMar DeRozan has won it ten times, Vince Carter and Chris Bosh have seven apiece, Kyle Lowry has a mere four awards, while Lou Williams, Jalen Rose, and Mike James (!!!) can now welcome Siakam into the one-time club. Let’s see if Pascal can jump up from there — my guess is: he can.

For completion's sake: C.J. McCollum is the Player of the Week for the West.