‘I want to be happy and find that joy again’

He’d sit and watch parts of the Raptors’ inglorious exit from the NBA playoffs, and Pascal Siakam wouldn’t recognize himself.

Oh, the body was the same, but the soul was different. He’d feel the invisible weight of the pandemic and a world in turmoil, and he couldn’t see his true self.

He vowed then that he’d find a way to be himself again — the joyful young man who loved what he did, rather than a worker just doing his job.

“When I watched the game, one of the things that I really felt was I didn’t recognize myself in terms of just, like, having fun,” Siakam said Thursday, the first time he’s spoken publicly at length about the Raptors’ — and his — disappointing performance in the 2020 post-season.

“I’m always somebody that has fun playing the game and I love this game, and I don’t never want to be able to play the game without any joy. I think that’s just something that I didn’t see (in) myself.”

To be sure, life was coming hard and fast at Siakam, and everyone else, when the NBA resumed play over the summer. A global pandemic was raging, teams were locked inside a bubble in Orlando, young Black men and women were being murdered and protests across the United States were disrupting the lives of friends and families separated from the players.

Some handled it better than others; some had things gnaw at them and change their very being. Siakam was far more the latter.

“I mean, the world is crazy right now.” he said.

“There’s so many different things that we all have to deal with as individuals, and I think it was no different for me. Just dealing with different things from the virus, to just all the things that are going on the world, family problems … everything.

“It was just a lot of things, and I didn’t feel like I was where I wanted to be physically and mentally.”

Things may not have changed much since those times — the protests have abated, while the

pandemic is claiming more victims than ever before — but Siakam said he’s better able to handle the vagaries of life now.

Aside from not yet having a place to live in the Raptors’ temporary Tampa home, Siakam said he feels more comfortable and at peace than he did the last time they moved to Florida.

He expanded his off-season work to include such things as a full-time nutritionist and a strength and conditioning coach — the usual steps in the maturation of a still-young professional.

The Raptors feel Siakam’s post-season was just a blip, an outlier in a career that’s been ascendant since he arrived as a question mark of a 27th pick in the 2016 NBA draft. He will be asked to carry more of the load this coming season after the departure of frontcourt teammates Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol, and the coaching staff and his teammates are fine with that.

Siakam said he was surprised that at least one of the freeagent big men didn’t return, but when he was putting together his off-season cadre of coaches and assistants, it was with an eye on an enhanced Raptors role.

“Sometimes just getting on a call with those people was just crazy, to see that amount of people just focusing on me and making sure that I’m good, and wanting to make me the best player that I can be,” he said. “I think we did an excellent job — my team, my agent, all the people around me — just making sure I had everything that I needed.

“Obviously we wanted to have more time, but that’s 2020, right? You don’t know what is going to happen. You have to expect anything and you’ve got to just be ready.”

One thing he didn’t do, he said, was pay attention to the criticism levied at him when last season ended.

It was the first time he’d ever been anything but the apple of fans’ eyes. Some of what was said was vile in the immediate aftermath of Toronto’s playoff ouster.

The night the Raptors lost Game 7 to the Boston Celtics, teammate Kyle Lowry suggested that he would counsel Siakam to read everything, hear everything and use it as motivation, as Lowry had once done. It’s not Siakam’s style, though. “I think we all deal with things differently and for me, if I listened to people I would never be where I am today,” he said.

“I want to be happy and find that joy again of just playing and having fun, and I don’t think me focusing on what people say is going to help me do that. I don’t really focus on that.”

It’s not him. And he now knows the consequences of not being himself.