Somehow they were able to keep it a surprise.
Pascal Siakam, his sister and his three brothers were able to co-ordinate buying a house and getting his mother, Victorie, to the property without her figuring out before she walked in the front door that she was now the owner of a home big enough for all of her family to be together after so many years apart.
As far as Mother’s Day presents go, it’s setting the bar high, but for the Raptors forward it was worth every dollar and every bit of effort.
The moment was captured on video and shared on social media — and it would be hard to imagine something more heartwarming. All four of the Siakam boys left Cameroon as teenagers to pursue their basketball dreams in the United States. It meant being separated from their parents and each other. And when their father Tchamo was killed in a car accident, it meant pushing on through grief toward an uncertain future.
Pascal Siakam surprised his mom with a house on #MothersDay and her reaction was priceless.
: IG/@pskills43 pic.twitter.com/h39dDFB7v4
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 10, 2021
In his fifth NBA season, Siakam has long passed through the periods of financial uncertainty where he couldn’t afford a phone charger when he was a student at New Mexico State and the challenge of having to choose between continuing his basketball career there or travelling home for his father’s funeral and jeopardizing his student visa.
But creating a new home for his mother and his family felt like an arrival of sorts, and not surprisingly, it struck a chord:
“Just to see the traction it got, that was pretty crazy,” said Siakam on Monday. “But for me, man, Mom’s been everything to us and she’s done it. When my Dad was there she was doing it. My Dad being gone, she’s just a superhero, she’s just done it all the time without complaining and everything like that. Just having something special for us, for my family, and having been through a lot of tough things, for me to be able to bring that joy to the family is just such a blessing. I feel blessed to be in that position and I’m just super happy about it. Obviously seeing her reaction makes it worth it.”
It could very well go down as the high point in what has been the most trying season of Siakam’s career.
As an NBA player Siakam’s only known winning, and since he’s become a featured member of the Raptors’ rotation, he’s only known success. But beginning with his struggles in the playoffs last year and through some up-and-down moments this year, Siakam has had to deal with more of everything: more expectations, more scrutiny, more criticism and more questions.
The Raptors playoff streak is over, there are only four games left and Siakam — who left Toronto’s loss to the Memphis Grizzlies on Sunday with a strained shoulder — may not appear in any of them. He’s getting some testing done and given Toronto’s incentive to pick as high in the draft as possible, Siakam may get all the rest he could ever need.
But through the down moments — being suspended by the team for a game after walking off the floor from fouling out late in a loss to Philadelphia on Dec. 29 or angrily confronting Nick Nurse in the dressing room after being benched for the fourth quarter of a loss to Cleveland on March 21 — Siakam has managed to find a way to keep rising.
On the floor he’s finished the season on a high: From the beginning of April until the Memphis game Siakam has averaged 24.9 points, 7.2 rebounds and 3.9 assists on 47.9 per cent. His three-point shooting — a struggle all year — was back in line with his career average at 31.6 per cent. He’s looked much more the part — see his 44-point career-high-tying effort against the Wizards last Thursday — his four-year, $136-million contract says he is, a deal that critics have used against him at times.
At 27, Siakam is in just his second year of being the ball-handling focal point of any offence — a latecomer to the sport, he was a post player in college and a complementary piece through his first three years with Toronto. Now he’s led the Raptors in scoring for two straight years and is emerging as a playmaker, too: He had 20 games with at least six assists in 56 games this season, more than the four seasons prior combined.
He’s still learning on the job and this past year there have been a lot of lessons to absorb.
“I think adversity obviously is not something that you want to go through,” said Siakam. “But it helps you and sometimes we define the type of person you are (based on that). And I think going through adversity sometimes will make a difference (depending) how you come out (of it).”
It could be a coincidence, but it’s worth noting that Siakam has played some of the best basketball of his career since he had his blow up with Nurse.
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At the time, Kyle Lowry — no stranger to heated moments with coaches but a now Hall of Fame-bound player and sage vet having gone through his growing pains and learned from them — had this to say about his younger teammate.
“I think just as you get more mature you learn how to channel your energy and communicate better, right?…. He’s still a young man, he’s still kind of living his life and in going through ups and downs and becoming this guy — an all-star, a max player (and) also becoming a more of a man, right?” said Lowry.
“He’s becoming more of a person that takes care of his family, he has to make decisions in life he has to worry about, you know, thinking about investments, to do this, that and the other. And the way you handle is you just keep growing, right? And sometimes you make mistakes and the biggest thing is you learn from whatever happens.
“I’ve learned from so many different things in my life, the mistakes that I’ve made the decisions that I’ve made, and I’ve learned from them… coaches and players, you know, they disagree, players and players disagree, there’s always disagreements, it’s just, how do you grow from it?”
Siakam apologized to Nurse and his teammates and has since taken the challenge head on. He’s spoken at times during the season about the need to look out for his family, to be a good uncle to his nieces, to stay above the buffeting winds of public opinion and instead focus on what his family, teammates and coaching staff think.
But it’s been a process. It wasn’t all that long ago he was at seminary school in Cameroon, studying to become a priest. It wasn’t that long ago he was the baby of the family. It wasn’t that long ago his job was to hustle, tip balls and score the occasional put back dunk. Now he’s the backbone of his family’s financial wellbeing and being looked at to win NBA games against stacked defences late in the fourth quarter. No surprise there’s been the odd turnover, both literal and metaphorical.
“It’s pretty interesting… it’s not a position I’ve been in before. Which I think, a lot of things that happened in my life the last six, seven years, things that are odd and I definitely wasn’t used to,” Siakam said. “But like everything else, I’ve always learned.
“I think for the most part I’ve made decent choices… and I kinda trust that. Obviously, it’s different, it’s crazy, you get so much more attention and it’s something that I’m not used to and it’s not really me or my character so I think that it’s just been interesting to manage that and figure out who you wanna be as a person, either on the court or off the court. How do you wanna be remembered? Or, how do you want people to look at you?”
The full picture is coming into sharper focus. He’s not a finished product yet, but Siakam’s getting there. His play on the floor is showing signs that he’s growing more comfortable in the most demanding role the league has, and the play he made Sunday with his mom shows he’s got plenty of game there too.
