So often in the NBA, stars are highlighted for their top skills. No one is shocked by Steph Curry's show of shooting anymore, nor do people doubt Giannis Antetokounmpo's ability to get to the rim, or LeBron James' basketball IQ.
However, within that conversation, we lose track of the supplementary skills that make players so much more than just the sum of their parts. In this series, we will take a deeper look at those secondary talents that certain Indiana Pacers leverage to maximize themselves.
Last time, we focused on Ivica Zubac's boxing out as the one skill that could silently swing the entire Pacers season, despite it being a largely ignored part of basketball conversations.
Today's focus is the ever-underappreciated, never-replicated Pascal Siakam.
Pascal Siakam was brought to Indiana to accelerate the Pacers' rebuild after two years of lottery-level basketball. Immediately upon his arrival, he was asked to go from a Toronto Raptors team that asked him to play alongside larger and larger lineups of just wings to a fastbreak focused offense that would get him touches within the flow of the offense.
Indiana still uses Siakam as an isolation scorer, depending on him to take much of the scoring load off of Tyrese Haliburton's largely overfilled plate. However, there is so much to what Siakam does now to fill in any and all gaps in the Pacers' roster construction.
From the added rebounding focus to the small ball center minutes to the smile he seems to sport in every clip the team posts of him and the training camps he hosts for the team, there is no real limit to what Pascal does.
Within that nonstop ability to do absolutely everything, it's easy to lose track of the small things that make Siakam so good.
This is a deep dive into one of those microskills, the one that made Siakam a perfect match for Indiana, and one that the Pacers have equally built around.
Slashing and dashing, attacking and stacking
Siakam is so good at doing just about everything that it's hard to say what he does best. Maybe that means his ever-presence is his biggest strength. It is the supplemental skills he has scaled up from his time as an end of the bench role player that make him so special.
It's easy to point to his ability to defend in space, transferring matchups and helping off the weak side, or even his decision-making off the catch on closeouts and in transition. However, the answer hides in one of the most obvious parts of basketball.
Pascal is an excellent slasher.
That word has been buried by 2K builds, but it is not simply a question of getting to the rim. Instead, it is a matter of knowing the open lanes on the court and how to fill them. Siakam does not simply get to the rim, he knows how to do it off the ball, resulting in him getting to the hardest spot on the court with less resistance than most face on an inbound.
It was this skill that made Tyrese Haliburton's insistence on attacking in full-court possessions work. Just as it enabled Haliburton to find his cutters in space in the past, it now also should be the easiest set of training wheels he can have in his return.
It seems easy, and yet pros with higher averages fail to do it.
That's what makes Siakam so miraculous. He has the abilities of a star, combined with the discipline and complements of a role player, all rolled up in a player that has no weaknesses.
That's pretty insane to find in an All-Star.
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