WARNING!!!! I’m not going to give you the Fanboy knee jerk reaction that will make you feel better. Sorry but my job isn’t to make you happy. It isn’t even to generate clicks to my work even though that is much appreciated. I’m here to dig around for the truth and share it. That’s it. Let the clicks fall where they may. Let you find your happiness as best you can. So with that harsh warning up front and now out of the way let’s dig into All Star selections and Pascal.
All Star selections are extremely important to players. While the ego boost for multi-millionaires with legions of fans is next level the real importance boils down to good old-fashioned money. Many players have performance clauses in their contracts and getting an All Star selection is a big one. Beyond that Supermax contracts only become possible after special conditions are met…with All NBA selections being a big part of that requirement. That happens at the end of the year…but All Stars tend to get All NBA so playing in the All Star game is important. So this topic might seem trivial to some but trust me, to Pascal Siakam not getting picked as an All Star this year was a serious setback financially. This summer Pascal is eligible for an extension. If he gets another All NBA nod he would be eligible for the Super Max extension. Otherwise he likely plays out his last year on his current deal and tries to get All NBA next year. If Pascal does NOT get an All NBA nod this year or next he is only eligible for a 30% Max contract. That 5% difference is about $7.25 million dollars per year at today’s Cap and will be more in a year and a half when it matters for Pascal. So there is serious money on the line for him.
In fact there is money on the line RIGHT NOW for Pascal!!! He has Designated Rookie contract language in his contract and has already increased his salary from 25% to 28% of the Cap with his 2nd team All NBA selection in 2019-20. If Pascal gets 1st team All NBA he boosts his salary right now to 29% of the Cap (1% being about $1.5 million currently). An MVP nod however unlikely boosts Pascal to 30% immediately! So while you might be really upset that Pascal wasn’t selected All Star this year believe me…he feels worse!
However…does Pascal DESERVE to be an All Star this year??? Raptor fans certainly believe so! His 25/8/6.2 pts, boards and assists stats have been plastered all over Twitter and Reddit for the world to bow down before. You might have noticed that I don’t pound out a ton of stats for readers of Raptors Truth and there is a reason for that. They Lie. They’re incomplete. They’re made up. Any quality analyst can dig up stats to prove any point they want to prove. Unless you really understand how they are collected and manipulated it’s impossible to apply an appropriate meaning to any stat. Like Box +/- for example. It’s a rough and dirty stat with so much ‘noise’ to be useless more often than it is useful. When it is useful it’s like a super low 144 resolution Youtube video. Grainy and not worth watching. So I show some basic stats here for readers to get a very broad picture of what happened but I don’t dig deep into it. There are lots of great sites that make up all sorts of stats if that’s your thing. Go for it. I’ve done enough university statistics to not be fooled and to not waste my time arguing the finer points of them. In my experience the people that argue stats endlessly haven’t played or coached sports much.
What I can tell you is that the NBA assistant coaches all picked the All Star ‘reserves’…the players not voted in by fans. If you don’t have a ton of respect for the opinions of practically all the coaches in the NBA then I don’t know what to say to you. They didn’t pick Pascal to be an All Star and they are the most qualified, highest level NBA minds with every waking moment spent working with players and trying to stop opponents’ players.
My analysis doesn’t equal a drop of water in their Ocean of basketball intellect.
So let’s look at all the pundits who feel they know basketball better than the best coaching minds getting paid millions and millions this year:
I could go on and on posting opinions like this but you get the point. Interestingly other opinions are much more diplomatic!
Now that’s a veteran Raptors reporter talking about the big subject but avoiding the elephant in the room completely. Getting hammered by Fans isn’t something many people enjoy so I understand the ‘diplomacy’ but hey…we want the Truth right! Soft ball puff stories aren’t my style! Imagine Blake’s reception at a Raptor’s practice if he wrote the Truth all the time!
And the Cold, Hard Truth is this. Pascal is NOT an All Star this year. He’s played amazing at times, good at times, average at other times. Basketball is driven by All Stars. They get way more money than average players because they are that important. The stats don’t explain 10% of what goes into teams winning. They can’t because they are measurements of such small parts of the game. However the one stat that matters more than everything else in professional sports is winning and losing. That is the sum total of everyone’s work and effort. It CAN’T LIE. I simply can’t extract quality stats on Pascal because other players impact him and he impacts them. The sport is played to find a winner and a loser. Every night.
So I have the absolutely most qualified people picking All Stars saying Pascal’s not one. I have the total of all the teams effort showing this team is bad. I know Pascal contributes the most to that result as well. So you can quote me all sorts of stats, Lebron, VARS and on and on. They aren’t smarter than all the coaches in the NBA. And let’s get this straight before we move on. Coaches don’t care if you play in Canada. They don’t care if you’re African or European. They don’t care about your last season, your status, your name. Coaches have a very strong desire to reward the players that deserve it above all else. Sure they have friends but they live in a very results based world. You put friends ahead of performance and you don’t get to coach at the highest levels in the NBA. Their job is winning and they are the best at determining who helps them win the most in basketball. They don’t suddenly become sentimental after decades of being ruthless handing out minutes on the floor to players.
So while ‘Sampson (the coach)’ feels he knows better than all the real coaches in the NBA and Es says it’s ‘insane bro’ I don’t. Sorry to dampen the mood around Toronto…if it even can get much lower. Pascal is a great player but far greater basketball minds have spoken and I agree with them. I don’t tell my doctor how to operate on me, I don’t tell my mechanic how to fix my car, I don’t tell my kids teachers how best to teach. They would have to say something wildly crazy for me to question their experience and education.
The margin between All Star and almost All Star is so razor thin it’s perfectly reasonable for less experienced people to think differently.
I happen to agree with the NBA coaches in this case because I highly value a team’s record as the final word on performance. I highly value wins and losses because I’ve head coached (not basketball) and I know it’s the bottom line in sports. To overcome that deficiency Pascal would have had to be head and shoulders above other players and he simply isn’t right now. Especially in the last 15 games or so. Pascal isn’t an All Star right now.
The Truth doesn’t care about your feelings. It isn’t ‘my truth’ or ‘your truth’. It simply is. I wish Pascal all the best like I do everyone…and I think speaking the truth is a great first step in finding what’s best. Don’t shoot the messenger bringing it. Thank him with a share and a like. It’s the modern way…
Agreed, stats don’t tell the truth, his iso game hurts the team and flow of the game. Which in turn is counter balanced by him scoring rebounding and passing. The difference between the two in essence is a simple way to calculate wins and losses, which comes down to the flow of the team on the court. The same can be said for Freddy, scores a lot and stats look good, but how does the getting mine affect the flow of the team? Coaches see more then Stats on a page.... I’d argue that both Pascal and Freddy don’t make the players around them better enough to be consider all stats at this point