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Pascal Siakam says basketball was "not fun at all" while playing for Toronto Raptors

Adam Laskaris
Adam Laskaris
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Jun 23 2025, 2:33 pm
Pascal Siakam says basketball was "not fun at all" while playing for Toronto Raptors
Dan Hamilton/USA TODAY Sports

The Toronto Raptors weren’t participating in this year’s NBA Playoffs, but they still found themselves entwined in the storylines of the biggest game of the year.

In the waning hours of the night after his Indiana Pacers fell to the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, former Raptors star Pascal Siakam took to the podium to share his thoughts on a whirlwind playoff run that fell one game short.

The fourth seed in the Eastern Conference, Siakam’s Pacers outlasted the Milwaukee Bucks, Cleveland Cavaliers, and New York Knicks but saw star Tyrese Haliburton suffer an injury in Sunday’s Game 7 that made the last chapter of their Cinderella story too harrowing to close out.

Siakam spoke about the effect of Haliburton’s injury on the team, as well as on the trade that brought him to Indiana in January 2024 and how it helped reframe his mental state.

“A couple years ago, I think basketball was just, kind of dark for me. It was not fun at all. And I got traded here and these guys, they just gave me a boost — starting with [Tyrese Haliburton] obviously — just playing with these guys has been so incredible,” Siakam told reporters after Game 7. “Just finding my joy for the game.”

Siakam’s Raptors were 15-25 when they traded him away last January, en route to a 27-win season. Since the trade, the Pacers have now won five playoff series in two years, while the Raptors have not won a postseason round since beating the Brooklyn Nets in the NBA bubble in 2020.

Siakam faced perhaps the harshest criticism during his time in Toronto during those 2020 playoffs. However, it was revealed that heavy COVID-19 restrictions in Canada severely limited his ability to train on the court during lockdown months.

While most of his teammates and opponents were able to work out in more relaxed American cities, Siakam felt he “lost track of time” during a quarantine period, during which he admitted he wasn’t able to play basketball for around three months.

“At the end of the day, I have to be better. Definitely a low moment for me, a learning experience,” Siakam said at the press conference following the Raptors’ elimination in 2020. “I wasn’t able to really help my teammates… I take a lot of the blame.”

But his time in Toronto wasn’t all doom and gloom, of course. A 27th overall draft pick in 2016, Siakam built up quite the resume in Toronto: two All-Star appearances, two All-NBA appearances, the NBA’s Most Improved Player award in 2018-19, and, of course, being a part of the 2019 NBA title-winning roster.

“Just playing with so much swagger and happiness, that’s all I want to do as a player, man. I lost that for a while, and it’s just so incredible that I came to a team with these guys,” Siakam said on Sunday.

While Haliburton might be the face of the franchise, Siakam picked up the Eastern Conference Finals MVP while also being the team’s leading scorer in each of the four rounds.

“I didn’t think this was possible because of the situation I was in, and just to see how amazing we did this year and all the things that we accomplished, obviously there’s no moral victory because we want to win and we thought we did a lot to put ourselves in a position to win and it sucks, but I’m super proud of everyone,” Siakam added about the Pacers run.

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