Scottie Barnes & Pascal Siakam forming lethal 2-man game

The duo of Pascal Siakam & Scottie Barnes were a headache for the Denver Nuggets on Saturday. They were working off and creating for each other, which some believed would never come to fruition. Amit Mann and Yasmine Duale discuss why the doubters were always wrong. Listen to the full chat on the 'Raptors Over Everything' podcast feed

Video Transcript

- 50 to 35, and a turnover, long lead pass. Siakam in deep. And he lays it in. Siakam trying to get by Rivers, can't. Barnes for 3, got it.

AMIT MANN: I mean, let's start off with Pascal Siakam and Scottie Barnes, right? So in that game against the Nuggets, they assisted on three of each other's baskets. And you could really see that two-man game going. And after the game, Pascal was asked about it. He was actually in rare form after that Nuggets game. He was all laughs, just making jokes nonstop.

He was making fun of the media again. He's like, oh, you guys aren't showing your faces again, just voiceover radio here. And he was having fun.

Anyways, yeah, there's a really cool two-man game happening between them. They're really feeding off of each other on both ends of the court. What are you seeing from those two?

YASMIN DUALE: It's about as good of an outcome you could hope for when you draft a player like Scottie, because I feel like the question early in the season was, can he play with Pascal? Because there's questions about whether Pascal can be the very best player on a championship team. And obviously, no one knows until you actually get to that point. It could be no, could be yes. Who knows?

But you don't want to have to trade a talent like that in order to accommodate a rookie. There's just too much risk involved in it. So the Raptors ended up with the best outcome possible, which is them being able to feed off of each other and benefit each other when they're on the court together.

So yeah, that's just been the best outcome for them because you have two players who can pretty much do a little bit of everything and who are both above-average playmakers. So they're able to kind of improvise in the moment. I really enjoy how someone will cut, or someone will just be open at the exact right moment for the dump-off pass.

And they kind of just know. I guess they put each other in one another's shoes. So they know what paths to anticipate. And it just always works out. I feel like you can probably make a good compilation off of the assists that they've shared throughout the season so far.

So it kind of just put to rest whether these two should be separated. But instead now, it's like, how can we build the best possible squad around such a great core? So I think it's awesome for Scottie that he's playing alongside someone with a very similar set of skills, who is in their prime. So it kind of just gives him a great idea of the work ethic behind it.

And for Pascal, we know what he came from. He wasn't the number four pick. He kind of worked his skill from the ground up. So it's great for guys like Scottie to see.

Just when I thought, OK, so this is a rookie Scottie, it's like, no. He's making another-- I thought he was kind of out of the Rookie of the Year conversation with how Mobley and Cade have been playing. But this 10-game stretch from puts him right back in there. He's been phenomenal, not just by rookie standards.

He's just been a great, solid player guarding the opposition's best offensive players too in the absence of OG.

AMIT MANN: Yeah.

YASMIN DUALE: Yeah, it's a great arrangement. It's the best possible outcome. And we haven't even seen-- this is just the tip of the iceberg, really.

AMIT MANN: Yeah. Must be tricky for Scottie, because he said earlier on in the season that he wanted to be Rookie of the Year. And some people didn't like that he said that because it's all about the team. But you're right. Those other guys, Cade and Evan Mobley, they're sort of running away with it to a degree, because just, they have different roles on the offense, right? But now--

YASMIN DUALE: Higher usage, yeah.

AMIT MANN: Yeah. And Scottie, he just doesn't have that responsibility, necessarily. He has a lot of responsibilities on the Raptors. But scoring in isolation isn't really one. And it seems like they're kind of discovering more of that because of injuries, obviously. And he's been given that opportunity to take more shots and to just bully ball people, right?

Take advantage of your size. And there's so many mismatches on the court for the Raptors. And after the game, again, with Pascal, he kind of talked about this, saying that one of us always has the mismatch. And you add in OG to that. And again, one of those three always has a mismatch.

And it's just about, how can we work off of each other? And it's kind of cool just seeing-- they always make sure that they're kind of on opposite ends of the court. And because of that, they're able to work off of each other. And they're both willing cutters, willing passers.

They're doing a really nice job of kind of relocating on the court too, that when Pascal's in the paint and he's kind of making his move, he knows Scottie's taking those couple of inches to the right or left to create a passing angle. And the 3-point shot for Scottie has been up and down. That's OK. It's going to probably stabilize itself.

Pascal's been pretty consistent there. But I mean, just with them too-- Jimmy Butler talked about this earlier on in the season. Between Kyle, myself, and Bam, we're such smart players. And we're both unselfish on the court. You kind of just figure it out over the course of time like, just because you want to figure it out, and you want to see each other do well.

And so you're less worried about who's this, who's that, where am I getting my shots. You're just like, let's just make this happen because we both have so many skills to utilize on the court. And eventually, we're going to get it right.

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