Raps are struggling to win, despite Siakam's effort

There isn't a lot to doubt about Pascal Siakam these days, except maybe within Siakam himself.

He wants to play more minutes. He wants to be involved in every aspect of the Raptors' play. He wants to reach back to the conditioning level he found himself in before a groin injury took him down.

And damn, he wants to start winning again.

Siakam stood in and battled Monday night against the best team in the Eastern Conference, the Boston Celtics, against the MVP favourite Jayson Tatum, and he went punch for punch, elbow for elbow, basket for basket, and defensive stop for defensive stop with Tatum in a game the Celtics won and the Raptors lost — and honestly, it was close enough to go either way.

As the Raptors' season meanders on, a season in which they win a game, then lose a game — with a 12-12 record after 24 outings — there is reason to believe better days are ahead when Siakam plays the kind of basketball his freakish skills enable him to show.

He played guard and forward, both small and large, and maybe in between a little centre Monday against the Celtics and ended the night with a Raptors-high 29 points. He scored more baskets than any Toronto player, took more free throws, missed too many of those, led the team in assists, and was one rebound away from leading the team in that category, as well. This is what Siakam, who gets MVP chants in Toronto sporadically, can do. This is how hard he can push. And this is the difference he can make.

He might match up with Tatum, who scored 31 points; he just can't shoot like Tatum. He just can't turn nothing into something as often. He may not be as smooth as the Celtics forward, but he is becoming the herky jerky champion of NBA players. He can be almost impossible to defend, which should make the Raptors a threat, if the rest of his teammates can pitch in. If you go back a few years when the Raptors played the Celtics in a playoff series inside the bubble of Orlando, Toronto was close to Boston, but Siakam seemed close to falling apart. His chance to become a star again seemed lost. His future of any kind of greatness appeared in doubt. What were they going to do with Siakam?

Nobody thinks that way anymore, not as this season is just 24 games old and with Siakam having missed 10 of them. He scored 29 against Boston, 26 the game before against Orlando, 24 before that. Each night a little better, a little more complete.

The good and the bad of Monday was that the Raptors could have beaten the Celtics, who do not seem to beat themselves. Boston shot the ball better than the Raptors. Passed the ball better than the Raptors. Defended better than the Raptors. They fundamentally ended up with a 116-110 win that could have been a 116-110 loss had the Raptors converted on their open shots.

Toronto couldn't make open threes. The Celtics didn't seem to miss threes in which they were completely covered. And a win became a loss in the process.

“Losing,” Siakam said, “it's not fun. This organization is not about losing. This is not who we are. We expect to win.”