Yes, he got one right and we didn’t listen, frankly. Shortly after Kawhi Leonard was traded to the Toronto Raptors in 2018, many analysts speculated on their title chances. I thought we were headed toward a Warriors-Celtics Finals after the Celtics captured the second seed in the East the previous season without Gordon Hayward. Mr. Thomas, however, thought differently. He really liked the Raptors roster and kept talking about this raw, athletic forward named Pascal Siakam. I had no clue who this dude was. I’m pretty sure he heard about Pascal Siakam after listening to the and episode of The Lowe Post. Based on my dad’s recent history in predicting players’ futures in the NBA, you would have been on my side in doubting his assertions about the forthcoming leap in Siakam’s game.
During the 2013 Eastern Conference Finals, pops was rooting for the Indiana Pacers because Lebron was overexposed, and he loves rooting for the underdog. Well, he fell in love with Roy Hibbert’s performance during the series. To his credit, Hibbert did have a substantial impact on both ends of the floor, averaging 15.8 points and 3.8 blocks as the series went the distance. However, Mr. Thomas was comparing Hibbert’s defensive impact to that of Tyson Chandler’s in the 2011 NBA Finals. There were two big problems with his comparison. While Roy Hibbert was effective in the half-court, he was useless in transition because he could not move his feet very well. Also, he was woefully inefficient on the offensive side of the floor. In his first seven seasons in the league, he never shot above 50% from the field which is absolute unacceptable if you are a 7’2” center in the NBA. Just four years after his stellar performance in the 2013 ECF, Hibbert was out of the league.
A less bold prediction came in 2016 when Bismack Biyombo was mildly effective in the 2016 Eastern Conference Finals against Lebron’s Cavaliers (see a theme here?). Now, my dad only forecasted that Biyombo would become a solid backup big in the NBA. Not much of a forecast to live up to, but Biyombo did not even meet that challenge. Biyombo is an absolute zero on the offensive end of the floor, and although he is an above-average rebounder, you can easily neutralize him due to his 6’8” 255 lb frame.
But back to Siakam...
Dad was relatively quiet as Siakam bolstered his stats during the 2018-19 season. Around the time of my graduation in December 2018, I was scrolling through NBA scores and found Pascal was listed as the player of the game for one of them and I mentioned it while sitting in the back of the car and my dad says, “Yeah that was the guy I was talking about. How’s he doing?” I clicked on his name and found that he as averaging 14 points, 5 rebounds, and 3 assists a game at the time. “Doing pretty good,” said Mr. Thomas, just rubbing it in by that point. Siakam ended raised his stats even more by the end of the season averaging 16.9 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 3.1 assists per game en route to an NBA Championship. Fast forward a year and he makes his first All-Star team with averages of 23.6 ppg, 7.5 rpg, and 3.6 apg. Can’t question it anymore, my dad saw what the rest of us did not. Pascal Siakam is a star and he’s here to stay.
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