Toronto Raptors: Pascal Siakam lone bright star this week

Every Thursday we bring you the Toronto Raptors Player of the Week. This week’s award goes to Pascal Siakam, who has been excellent through three games.

It’s finally happened, the Toronto Raptors have gone sub .500 for the first time during a week. The back-to-back losses to the New Orleans Pelicans and the Dwane Casey led Detroit Pistons, serve as the first consistent struggles of a young season. The Raptors are now 12-3 and still find themselves at the head of the NBA.

With such a disappointing week, Raptor fans can hang their hat on the fact that Pascal Siakam once again had a great run.

Pascal Siakam’s Week

With no slowing down in sight, Siakam’ hot streak continued as he set a team and a personal high in points scoring 23 against the lowly New York Knicks. Led surprisingly by Siakam and the bench, the Raptors managed to squeak out their only win of the week.

What followed was one of, if not the most, fluky and disappointing performances of the year for the Raptors. They allowed E’Twuan Moore to get hot and scorch them for 30 points with his streaky shooting. The performance was also backed-up by the 71 points between Anthony Davis, Jrue Holiday and Julius Randle. Even with the bad team performance, Siakam stayed hot, scoring 22 points, fighting for three rebounds but also stuffing three shots.

The Raptors closed out the week in disappointing fashion as they let slip an easy victory against a gritty Detroit Pistons team. With the return of Coach Casey, the pressure was stacked and proved too much for the Raptors as they collapsed after being up 88-77 at the start of the 4th quarter. Siakam still had himself a nice game scoring 17 points, grabbing seven rebounds, two assists, a block, and a steal.

This week should a standard for Siakam as the season continues to progress throughout the year, he reached a new career-high in points (23) and was scary efficient while shooting the ball. Siakam shot 22-31 from the field but it was his three-point shooting that stood out the most, hitting 6-9 shots from deep. He also got it done at the line hitting 12-14 when brought to the stripe.

Missed the cut

If we’re going to be completely honest with each other there was no other player on my mind for the player of the week. Siakam did it all for the Raptors all while trying his best to go 3-0 on the week. The only comparable player this week was OG Anunoby and he even had a bad game against the Pistons.

All in all, this was a bad week for the Raptors. They will aim to bounce back against an always deadly Boston Celtics team. Although this game isn’t near the end of the season it will be a good measuring stick for where both the Raptors and the Celtics are thus far in the season. I think it’s safe to say this game would be a big win for the Raptors.

Make sure to check out the Raptors Player of the Week every Thursday on RaptorsRapture.com.