Should Raptors panic during Pascal Siakam’s shooting slump?

The Toronto Raptors have placed an undue burden on All-Star power forward Pascal Siakam, as their offensive shortcomings have often been overshadowed by the Cameroonian star emerging as one of the game’s best and brightest. That hasn’t been the case since the calendar flipped to March, however.

After averaging over 26 points per game during February, Siakam is averaging just 15.2 points per game in six March contests, four of which have been losses. Siakam has barely made over 40% of his shots, hasn’t scored more than 20 points, and has just one game in which he made more than 50% of his total attempts.

Rather than give him the load management treatment that many superstars of his caliber receiver, Nick Nurse has been putting Siakam out there for heavy minutes every single night. Based on the last few games, this doesn’t seem to be doing him very much good.

The Raptors are certainly alarmed by Siakam’s recent poor play, but how alarmed should they be exactly? Is this something worth panicking over, or is it your average, garden-variety shooting slump that will be broken out of with enough elbow grease and time?

Should the Toronto Raptors be concerned about Pascal Siakam?

The Siakam situation is mirroring what happened with Fred VanVleet down the stretch last season. After leading the offense to such a ridiculous degree that his stats put him in the All-Star game, the physical toll of that play style made it so that they were unable to sustain that level of production.

There are less bombastic and frightening reasons for Siakam’s poor play. On top of the fact that this is just a six-game sample size, Toronto is still trying to figure out how to make Siakam work now that Jakob Poeltl is hanging around inside and taking up space in the paint.

Siakam is still the engine that will drive this Raptors train, as they will likely do whatever they can to make sure he never wears another team’s jersey. Still, if fans are going to rip on Fred VanVleet and Gary Trent Jr. in their slumps, Siakam must be held accountable also.

On a scale of 1 to 5, let’s put the panic meter at a firm 2 or 2.5 right now. Siakam is way too talented to keep playing like this, but the Raptors also risk letting their championship hopes totally evaporate if they keep letting Siakam put up such ridiculously bad stat lines every night.