Jumat, 01 Januari 2021

Raptors send strong message to Siakam with benching - TSN

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TORONTO – There were 25.6 seconds on the clock when Pascal Siakam picked up his sixth and final foul in Tuesday’s contest – a disappointing 100-93 loss to the rival Philadelphia 76ers, which dropped the Raptors to 0-3 on the young season.
 
The expectation for a player that fouls out of a game, and isn’t ejected, is to spend the duration on the bench with his team. Visibly, and understandably, frustrated by the defeat – and the part he played in it – Siakam left the court and walked straight to the locker room.
 
“I didn’t see that,” head coach Nick Nurse said afterwards. “I’m sure I will hear about it. I’ll address it when I get back in the locker room. I’m sure he was frustrated. He had a difficult night at the offensive end, and obviously he fouled out. I’m sure he was frustrated.”
 
When Nurse and Toronto’s front office conferred on Wednesday, they determined that the aforementioned incident warranted disciplinary action. Early on Thursday, they told Siakam that they planned to hold him out of the team’s game against New York later that evening. His teammates learned the news at morning shoot shortly after.
 
“It was a disciplinary thing for an internal matter and that’s the decision we went with tonight,” Nurse said, following the Raptors’ first win of the campaign – a 100-83 victory over the Knicks.
 
Siakam was on the bench, rooting his team on in street clothes. Technically, he was listed as active. It wasn’t a suspension, so the missed game won’t cost him any money. It does send a message, though, and it’s a strong one.
 
According to sources close to Siakam, “Pascal accepted the action [the team] chose to take,” but he was obviously disappointed not to be out there with his teammates.
 
After spending the abbreviated off-season working to bounce-back from his uninspiring performance in the bubble, Siakam has struggled to start the new campaign, most notably late in games. He hit just one of his four shots in the fourth quarter of the loss to Philly, and committed a couple of crucial turnovers, as the Raptors squandered their lead, which was once as large as 14 points. Five of his six fouls came over the final seven minutes and most of them were entirely avoidable.
 
His frustration seemed to be with himself, more than anything else, and the Raptors can appreciate that – everybody was frustrated, and they should have been frustrated, but clearly the team felt he should have channelled his emotion differently and done a better job of keeping his composure.
 
The message they’re sending to the 26-year-old – a rising star and young leader with the club – as well as to everybody else on the team, is that more is expected of them in those high-pressure situations.
 
“Just a certain way we want to do things, and everybody’s got to be a part of that,” Nurse said. “[It’s] as simple as that.”
 
“I don’t think anybody’s happy to see him not play, but that was the decision that came down, so you roll with it,” said Fred VanVleet. “We’re all in this together and everybody makes mistakes.”
 
“This is something that’s not gonna linger around us. P was great. He was great, he handled it very well, he was a great energy for us on the bench tonight even though he wasn’t playing, and we can’t wait to get him back out there with us.”
 
The expectation is that Siakam will be back in the lineup when Toronto visits the Pelicans on Saturday.
 
The Raptors didn’t miss Siakam much on Thursday, but that said more about the Knicks than it did about them. Toronto’s league-worst offence continued to underwhelm, shooting just 41 per cent from the field and 32 per cent from three-point range. However, New York went an abysmal 3-for-36 from long distance and was simply outmatched in the fourth quarter, when VanVleet and Kyle Lowry put the game away.
 
Earlier on Thursday, recently acquired centre Alex Len – who impressed with 11 points in 13 minutes off the bench against the Knicks – alluded to some tension that’s been building up in the Raptors’ locker room. Nurse called it “seriousness” more than tension. Whatever you call it, three straight losses – compiled with the developing Siakam situation – had clearly taken a toll on a team that’s become accustomed to winning.
 
“Losing three in a row anytime in a season is not acceptable around here and I think a lot of guys are fired up,” said VanVleet, who scored a game-high 25 points on New Year’s Eve. “There’s a core group here and we know what each other’s thinking at all times, but sometimes things just need to be said out loud. So I think guys said enough is enough and it was time to get a win. Some things were addressed, and not that that’s the reason why we won, but I think it was just time.”
 
The hope for the Raptors, going into 2021, is that this win – even one with an obvious caveat, coming against the Knicks – can ease some of that tension, take that weight off their shoulders, and help jumpstart their season.

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2021-01-01 05:19:36Z
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