The glory of the game is undeniable. The adulation of the crowd, the big shot at the big moment, wins to share with teammates and the exhausting pursuit of a championship are impossible to duplicate, and why most athletes pursue their dreams in such a public manner.
Pascal Siakam knows that well. He’s lived and experienced it all in a still-short NBA career, and there are nights when little feels better to him than the collective success of the Raptors.
But it’s the quiet days — the hard slogs in hot gyms in the throes of the off-season, when so few are around and the true work of trying to master the craft of basketball is done — that get to the essence of who Siakam is, what he wants to be, why he does what he does.