TORONTO — Pascal Siakam’s voice booms.
Whether he is trying to alert a referee that he believes he has been fouled while attempting a shot — “And-1!” — or trying to elicit a jump scare from an unsuspecting teammate in the locker room, if Siakam wants you to hear his voice, you’re going to hear it.
The same is true for Christian Siakam, one of the Raptors forward’s three older brothers. Lately, he’s been using that powerful voice to his advantage. Like his youngest brother, who used the G League as a springboard to NBA stardom with Christian’s help, Christian is taking a professional leap this year as a first-time assistant coach for Raptors 905.
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Like Pascal, Christian still draws pride from his game, and it allows his enthusiastic tenor to come out. Raptors 905 head coach Eric Khoury has revealed Siakam’s nickname when some of the team’s coaches and staffers get on the floor themselves: Big Hesi.
“Ooooooh,” says Christian, delighted, his tone and volume remarkably similar to Pascal’s. “I think that where my ball fake comes from, the shot fake, spin. I have all that. That’s where the ‘hesi’ comes from. Dribble, dribble, hesi, finish it. There’s just a lot in the bag. There’s a whole lot. Not a lot of common moves when I’m playing.”
A minute earlier, Christian suggested his offensive skill set from his NCAA Division-I and professional playing days influenced Pascal. The two-time All-NBA forward, in fact, might have taken the moves from Cristian.
Pascal goes quiet. He’s disgusted by the implication, knowing full well this is just another case of Christian running his mouth.
“Hell no. No. No,” Pascal says, walking away. “Never.”
In open gym speak, “hesi” is short for hesitation. It covers almost any move that involves a deliberate change of pace by the offensive player to impact the balance and preparedness of the defender.
Christian Siakam’s game is all about timing — as is his new career path.
Christian Siakam (55) during his college playing days. (Photo courtesy IUPUI)In his sophomore season at New Mexico State, Pascal Siakam averaged 20.3 points, 11.6 rebounds and 1.7 assists per game. Four years later, Reggie Perry averaged 17.4 points, 10.1 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game in his sophomore season at Mississippi State. Perry is 6-foot-8 and 250 pounds. Siakam is 6-foot-9 and 230 pounds.
As basketball players, they are more alike than different. They have a clear link now: Christian Siakam.
A late second-round pick in 2020, Perry, having played with three different NBA teams, is with Raptors 905 trying to get his next shot. This is Christian’s first full season as an assistant coach with the team, although he was a volunteer coach last year and had a presence before then.
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Perry said Christian is teaching him a crash course in many of the moves that have made Pascal one of the greatest developmental success stories in NBA history: the spin move, the stepback jumper, learning how to use his body to create space at a variety of angles. Christian’s history with his brother gives him credibility with players. But that’s not what resonates most with Perry.
“He has a high energy level every single day,” Perry said. “He doesn’t miss a day. … He’s definitely not afraid to tell you the truth.”
Since Christian is his brother, Pascal can speak a little more freely about that trait.
“He’s problematic. He’s a little nutcase,” Pascal said, smiling. “He’s always been like that. Being one of the older guys in the family, having a lot of siblings, I think you have to be that voice sometimes.”
Christian, 34, is the second-oldest of the four Siakam brothers — younger than Boris, 36, older than James, 30, and Pascal, 28. They also have two sisters, Vanessa and Raïssa. The Siakams aren’t shy, per se, but Christian has always been the boisterous, fun-loving one. James remembered the family having to encourage Christian to find time to be serious.
Of the group, Christian is the people person. James said you could drop Christian in a country where he doesn’t speak the language, and he’ll have made friends in 48 hours.
“If you don’t like him,” said Raptors assistant coach Rico Hines, Pascal’s long-time skill-development coach, “there’s something wrong with you.”
All four brothers went to the United States to play basketball, with Pascal, somewhat ironically, taking to the sport later than the rest of them. Boris played at Western Kentucky, Christian at Indiana University-Purdue University Indiana (colloquially known as IUPUI, George Hill’s alma mater) and James at Vanderbilt.
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Christian was jovial but focused. The coaching staff at IUPUI taught a lot of zone defence, and Todd Howard, an assistant during Christian’s tenure, marveled at his ability to be the “air-traffic controller” at the rim — especially because Siakam was putting the coaches’ instructions in a mental English-to-French translator at the beginning.
Throughout Christian’s time in college, IUPUI’s coaches used him in several offensive roles depending on the matchup. It worked because of his willingness to learn.
“Sometimes you’re working with a player and it’s punishment for both (the player and the coach). But him, he was bouncing off the walls,” Howard said. “You couldn’t wait to get there. You’d probably end up staying too long and you would end up having to hurry him off to class.”
It’s a mindset that took him to a successful four-year collegiate career and professional stops in Bahrain and Malaysia. After basketball, he started working as a manager at Enterprise. And then Pascal reached the pinnacle of the sport.
Christian, left, and Pascal Siakam. The necklace features Pascal, and their late father, Tchamo. (Photo courtesy Toronto Raptors)Tchamo Siakam, the family’s patriarch, died in a car crash in October 2014. Due to his immigration status, Pascal could not leave the U.S. to travel back to Cameroon for his father’s funeral. (Raptors fans will remember Pascal’s pre-draft workout in 2016 had to be held in Buffalo instead of Toronto for the same reason.)
The Siakams were, and remain, a close-knit family. There was no way they were going to let Pascal start his NBA journey without familial support. They weren’t worried Pascal would go astray after being drafted late in the first round by the Raptors in 2016, but they knew being an NBA player involves more than just working on your game. Pascal, who was only a few years into living in North America, didn’t even have his driver’s licence at the time. In his brother James’ words, Pascal needed a personal assistant, not a guardian.
“It was almost unanimous, to be honest. Everybody thought, ‘That should be Christian,’ because Christian just knows things,” James said. “He knows what to do. His skills as far as adaptability goes are literally insane.”
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“Christian would give his life for Pascal,” said former Raptors 905 head coach and Raptors assistant Patrick Mutombo, who is now on the Phoenix Suns’ staff. “He would sacrifice his life for Pascal.”
The move also served Christian. He was the one who was always trying to teach the game to others. Christian had a passion for basketball and wanted to pursue a coaching career.
He knew it was not going to happen right away. Pascal’s well-being was paramount. Pascal’s remarkable ascent — from the G League to rotation player to key scorer on a championship team to All-NBA pick by his fourth season — only made his life more complicated.
“Stress doesn’t necessarily come from the family,” Christian said. “But (I wanted him) just focusing on one thing. There are a lot of people coming in, old friends (trying) to come back in (his circle) — there’s a lot more of that than you can imagine. We try to just keep it a closer circle. That’s the most important thing. And just having fun, man. We need to have fun. When we’re home we’ll play board games and that type of stuff. It’s important to have a clear mind.”
“He’s my brother,” Pascal said of the importance of having Christian in Toronto. “People have people around them. People have assistants. But he’s my family. I’m still his little brother.”
Regardless, Christian found a way to help his brother and further his personal ambitions. For one, he became an integral part of his brother’s offseason workouts. Pascal said Christian has never missed a day of summertime work. With Hines in charge, Christian was sometimes just a body to bounce Pascal off of. It was never just that for Christian, though.
Given the nature of the coaching, Christian displayed one of the most important traits necessary for success: dependability.
“I always tell him that he’s my truth-teller. He’s very honest on the court,” Hines said. “He sees stuff I don’t see on the court with Pascal’s development.”
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“Christian pays attention,” Mutombo added. “He’s not one of those guys who was just a (glorified) rebounder. People respect that he knows what the journey looks like, he knows what the work looks like.”
His brother’s success serves as the biggest credential as he tries to make his way into professional coaching — especially in the G League, where players are trying to figure out how to get to the next level. No, Christian didn’t direct Pascal’s skill development.
He was there for every step, though.
The trick is in channelling that exposure without relying on it. If you talk about your successful brother too much, experience might be confused with nepotism.
“I think it’s more for credibility. ‘OK, this guy knows what I’m going through,”’ Christian said. “That’s the only thing. I don’t use that (elsewhere) because I have a lot of knowledge about basketball. When they hear (Pascal’s) story, they think, ‘He knows what he’s talking about.’ … I’ve been through that process. But I don’t have to tell you that. I just look at what I’m seeing and try to get you better.”
Pascal Siakam with the Toronto Raptors. (Dennis Schneidler / USA Today)This is Pascal Siakam’s fifth year as an undeniable part of the Raptors’ core. Important players earn personal favours from their teams regularly. If Pascal wanted, Christian could have been further along his coaching journey by now.
“I’ve always wanted to … make sure that he’s helping me, but (I also hoped) that he can find his own path in helping me,” Pascal said. “I hate sometimes when guys have their families and they’re done playing (at the end of their careers) and their families just look at them and it’s like, ‘What did you do this whole time?’”
Coaching requires a significant time commitment. Christian had dipped his toe in the water a few times, according to Courtney Charles, a long-time Raptors staffer who is now the vice-president, basketball and franchise operations with Raptors 905. It just never quite worked out. Asked why he is getting into coaching on a formal level this season, Christian said it was a matter of timing.
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It’s easy to draw a line from now back to the pandemic shutdown — when Pascal went months without playing basketball, returned from the hiatus as a diminished version of himself and then had a pair of run-ins with the coaching staff and organization. Add in Pascal’s offseason shoulder surgery, and it was a complicated time.
“I think he was willing to sacrifice his dreams,” Hines said, “to help his brother excel.”
“I think a good chunk of (Christian’s delay) was making sure I was OK,” Pascal said. “I’d like to believe that I’m grown now.”
Last season, both Pascal and Christian went to Mutombo, who has known the Siakam family for years thanks to the NBA’s and Masai Ujiri’s initiatives in Africa, to advocate for a role for Christian with Raptors 905. Mutombo’s solution: a job as a volunteer coach. He could afford to pay three full-time assistants in the G League, and Christian was not going to take the spot of a more experienced coach on Mutombo’s staff. Mutombo didn’t rely on Christian to draw up plays or prepare scouting reports, but, in addition to doing on-court work, he assigned him tracking duties during games.
For Mutombo, this was an effort to put Christian through a similar experience he had as a young coach. Mutombo recalled George Karl calling on him, a junior member of the Denver Nuggets staff, to offer insight into a just-completed playoff game in 2013.
“I had no clue what I was talking about. I had no clue,” Mutombo said. “But what that forced me to do was go home, study, watch the game more intently and not like a fan — grasp the different nuances of a game and then really challenge myself.”
That is the biggest obstacle for Christian going forward. If he has a master’s degree in individual player development, he is just getting started on his bachelor’s degree in video work and team preparation. Christian said he expects to be able to put together a full opposition scouting report by the end of the season, with Khoury adding Christian already contributes to game planning.
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Christian will have to be able to double- and triple-task, because his biggest impact is still on the court with 905 players.
“(The) dude — he’s a lot of human being,” Mutombo said. “Just look at him. He’s big. He’s got good size. And he’s not afraid. With first-time coaches, a lot of times, they’re unsure of what they’re talking about. They’re kind of guarded. Christian just jumped right in. If there’s a group of people that can detect a fraud or detect insecurity really quickly and expose it, it’s players. Players responded to him right away. They respected his love. And they respected his anger. … When he got mad about something, it meant something to players.”
“I’m the kind of person who doesn’t sugarcoat things,” Christian said. “I tell it exactly like it is. If it’s the truth, I’ll tell you. If you have something you want to say about it, I’ll talk about it. But I’ll tell you what I’m thinking.”
Pascal Siakam’s preference when he gets home from a game is to not discuss it. He wants to zone out. Anything but basketball.
Christian has a different mindset. His passion for basketball is unyielding. Pascal is getting used to listening to Christian go on about Raptors 905 games, whether it’s celebrating a success or rueing a failure.
“The 905 is basically us,” Pascal said. “He vents to me all the time. Sometimes I get tired of it because I don’t want to go home and talk about basketball. But he gets mad. He’s emotional about it and he cares. He vents to me about the game. It’s funny to see.”
Christian remembers when he told Pascal he was going to take on a formal role with Raptors 905.
“He was super proud. He was very, very excited. He loved it and supported me a hundred percent,” Christian said. “It’s incredible, the way he supports me through this whole process. I’m actually impressed, because he’s not (always) that type of guy.”
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The start of a Christian’s coaching career is another victory for the family. Managing the responsibilities of an NBA star have expanded beyond Pascal and Christian to the point, James said, he is now free to throw an unneeded off-court opportunity for Pascal in the garbage bin without consulting either because the family-wide trust and synchronicity are excellent.
“I told their mom (Victoire) that when my sons grow up, I hope they will have the same love for one another as your sons,” Mutombo said. “It’s incredible. I was with them recently in Africa, and the support and love they have for one another — their parents did an incredible job. We go to work out and the four brothers are there encouraging, guarding (Pascal), talking trash to him. It’s incredible. I have to take a step back. I have four sons myself. I say, ‘My goodness, I pray one day this is the type of love my boys have for one another.’”
Like his youngest brother, Christian is ambitious, but he isn’t saying the words “NBA head coach” so early in his journey. That requires a lot of work, time and luck. For now, he would like to make it to the staff of an NBA team.
“It’s a process. Now, I’m in the G League,” Christian said. “That’s why we’re all in the G League — to learn. And then go to the big dogs.”
With this family’s history of outpacing expectations, it’s hard not to like Christian’s chances of pulling it off.
“He’s been excited about this for a while,” James said. “What we do, Christian and I specifically, we like to daydream sometimes. We’d play out scenarios, or hypotheticals.
“‘Imagine you go with Pascal, you do this, you get in all these workouts. … What if at the end you get a chance to coach for somebody? They see you at all these workouts. You do all this stuff, and they say, we need a coach to do this, this and that. Can you be that person? And you go off, and you do this and you do that, and the next thing you know, you’re a head coach, or something like that.’
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“It’s something we literally talked about before we embarked on this journey. We talked about this, materializing it, manifesting it. And it’s happening.”
(Photo illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; photos: Toronto Raptors, Christian Bonin, IUPUI Basketball)
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