For Pascal Siakam, part of the attraction of playing in Toronto is Canada’s bilingualism, but the native of Cameroon initially shied away from using his French.
“I kind of ran away from it my first few years but now, being in this position, I take pride in it and I embrace it,” he said recently.
The position Siakam finds himself in today is a far cry from this time last year. At that point, Siakam — drafted 27th in 2016 — had only seen middling minutes off the bench. The potential was there, but he had yet to fully break out.