3 Toronto Raptors who must step up after Jakob Poeltl's ankle injury

1. Pascal Siakam

Even as trade rumors begin to swirl overhead, the Raptors are still trusting Siakam to fill some vital roles in their scheme. Like Boucher, fans might see less of the Pascal they have been used to and more of the small-ball center on display during the final years of Nick Nurse's tenure.

Siakam will need to replace Poeltl's scoring and rebounding. The rim protection will be impossible to duplicate, but the Raptors need all hands on deck to make life tough on defenders driving to the basket. It's a tall order, but it shouldn't be impossible for an All-NBA player to play a big part in plugging the holes created by Poeltl.

The Toronto Raptors need Pascal Siakam to ball out.

Toronto has actually been blowing the doors off competition in lineups with Siakam at the center spot this season, and Pascal graded out as an above-average offensive player in terms of points per 100 possessions when lining up at the 5-spot over the last two seasons. The blueprint for success is there.

While it's understandable that Darko Rajakovic would want to keep him in his old role so as not to upset things too much from a structural point of view, but Poeltl was so important to how Toronto operated that Siakam might need to play more like a traditional big man to keep with some of the more complete teams in their upcoming schedule.