Pascal Siakam is a certified star in the NBA. And usually, I don't concern myself with how players are perceived in the public eye, but Siakam seems destined to forever be a little bit underrated by everyone. Add up everyone's slight underrating of him, and I think he earns the bittersweet title of "Most underrated player in the NBA."
The bitter part is that folks won't ever know how good he is. The sweet part is that perception doesn't change the fact that he is that good. He may not be a top 10 player in the NBA, but he's closer to that distinction than he is to being outside of the top 30.
The season opener on Thursday — which ended in heartbreak for the Pacers — was merely another big performance from Siakam when his team calls for a big performance. Siakam showing up in big moments is so expected at this point that it's easy to forget that not all players do show up.
Showing up is a skill, and it's perhaps Siakam's best. He showed up in the Finals for Toronto (22 / 7 / 8 in the series), and he's shown up with dazzling consistency in all seven playoff series he's played with the Pacers. If consistency can be dazzling, that is. And Siakam makes me think it is. His YouTube highlight videos won't be the most popular, but his game logs are a thing of beauty.
Pascal Siakam morphs better than any other player in the NBA
I'll give you all the money in my wallet right now (one dollar) if you can name me five players in the NBA who can shapeshift their game better than Siakam can. Whatever is needed on a given night, Siakam is willing to provide it. He's long been an underrated playmaker, he's a switchable defender, and he can score at a pretty high volume.
Nothing is flashy on a play-by-play basis, so you often don't realize how impactful Siakam is to a game until you get to the end and realize that he did something positive seemingly every possession.
At this point, over a decade in, I doubt Siakam minds being underrated. It's kind of fitting that he's so underrated in Indianapolis, a wholly underrated city. Would Pacers fans really want it any other way? The results the past two years have spoken for themself. Who cares what the rest of the world thinks?