The Toronto Raptors' Pascal Siakam is one of the most likable players in the NBA. He is a self-made multi-millionaire who has taken moderate talents (it appeared) as a late first-round draft choice out of New Mexico, worked diligently with high-level coaching with the Raptors organization and summers at UCLA in the off-season and has become an all-star. This from a guy who wasn't interested in basketball much growing up in Cameroon and only started a path towards NBA stardom a continent and an ocean away because he tagged along to a basketball camp with a friend as something to do during a hot summer weekend.
He's a goofy guy who is one of the few Raptors to star in local commercials (along with the make-good idol of the undrafted, Fred VanVleet) because he doesn't have to talk to make people feel good. He does talk though and his punchlines bring smiles and laughs.
So, I do not come here to bury Siakam. Far from it. If I had a daughter, he's exactly the kind of guy I would hope she brings home for the 'talk' with her parents. But there IS a thing Siakam does that drives me to extraction. He has a propensity for jumping in the air looking for someone, ANYONE, to pass the ball to. A lot of those times, he passes behind himself, frequently to poor effect. Other times, he actually gets the pass off to a fellow Raptor and then CRASHES into a defender, standing there ready to take the charge. And those fouls/turnovers are doubly hurtful for the Toronto team.
My old high school coach at the junior level was Gerry (T-Tough) Thompson, who had a long and distinguished career coaching Bramalea Secondary Bronco junior boys' teams. Good coach, one of three I would think of, when asked who were the best basketball coaches in town. But I watched him learn a real tough lesson one year in the region final against Applewood Heights. There was a game plan that day. Shooting guard Bob Hamilton was going to be the ball distributor, throwing a curve ball at the Axemen in their gym. Coach Thompson figured Hamilton, the leading scorer on that team, would do a good job distributing the ball. And he was wrong.
Just like Siakam, Hamilton drove into the paint as often as he could, planning to distribute the ball. But his way of doing it was to jump in the air, and when that happened, the well-coached Applewood Heights team just sloughed off him or stood their ground. A good shooter isn't necessarily a good passer and on that day, Hamilton looked like a flopping fish before fouling out late in a one-sided loss. Hamilton's play that night violated what I thought had been a cardinal Thompson rule. "Never leave your feet to make a pass without knowing where that pass is going."
It's one of the rules that became foundational to my understanding of the game as a rarely-used, undersized, and slow, back-up point guard. And later a sports reporter and an announcer for pro basketball in Toronto. You don't leave your feet to make a pass without good reason (and virtually guaranteed success). I had been provided with the proof and in my own play, the difference between jumping and not leaving my feet was only a few inches anyways. I was living proof of the stereotype, white men can't jump.
Which brings me to Al Brown, the principal at J.A. Turner Secondary and it's senior girls' basketball coach. Brown was the silver fox of the coaching set and created a mini-dynasty at the school on the other side of Brampton from Bramalea. It took me until after I was done being a sports reporter and he'd retired from the teaching of our young for me to add Brown to my pantheon of best school coaches I knew. He wasn't self-effacing, but at the same time he wasn't a big talking self-promoter. It was my understanding that he was an outstanding administrator and a better teacher. He had some ... let's call them interesting ... training routines that he mandated be run early and late in practices and in warm-ups before games. The germane one here was his jab-step, stop and jump for a short range shot. Not the raindrop extended layup popular today. He had his ladies come to a stop by jabbing hard and jumping backward and maintaining good proper shooting form for a ten-foot shot attempt.
This was extraordinary successful as the Hamilton sisters, Janet Weaver and a host of other players scored consistently in the (semi) fast break, rarely charging and hitting a high percentage of their shots, no matter the size of the opponents. And it wasn't just the guards. Tracey Gerber, the lion-maned power forward was equally adept at the art. The key was arresting the forward momentum with a hard step, falling back and depending on form and two changes in angular momentum to actually create a fairly good up-and-down shooting posture.
Brown coached technique as well as any of the coaches in the boy's game did during that era, the 70s to the early 90s. The game at that time was changing in town as the town became a city became a mega-city. The complexion changed and schools in town became more athletic. There were strong runs at several schools over the next 25 years, putting Brampton on the map as a source of NBA-calibre talent.
But I don't think the coaching in town is any better than the last quarter century if the 20th century. In fact, I could argue in some ways that it isn't as good. Better athletes, more year-round roundball players. Yes. But better coached?? I think Al Brown would have a credible argument to the contrary.
Back to Siakam. He's a devout disciple of the DeMar DeRozan school of adding a skill each summer. I fervently hope the skill he adds this summer is the jab-step jump stop. It's more difficult for him, given his racing horse speed and there's always the worry his joints won't agree with his decision to bring himself to a sudden stop. But he can't keep taking charges, costing him a foul that might put his butt on the bench AND turnover the ball at the same time. It's a double-whammy. He's got to stop doing that. If it means curling out when there's more than one defender between him and the basket, so be it. Better to pull it back under control.
Wish there were some tapes of J.A. Turner's old warmups. Sure, it's a bunch of under-sized white girls, but I'm sure Siakam would benefit from the viewing.
