You never know when an NBA player will have a great game. Momentum and current form on the court is always conducive to an NBA star having a great game, but sometimes players will be able to break their slump and have a great night on the court. It doesn’t even have to be factors related to basketball that can help a player have a strong showing.
Pascal Siakam might have had a great performance thanks to a bizarre reason. Against the Washington Wizards, Siakam scored 31 points in order to help the Raptors get the win. After the game, Siakam explained a possible reason he had the performance that he did, which is still hard to believe.
Pascal Siakam credits his niece peeing on him for his 31-point performance tonight pic.twitter.com/QjQYaa3Mja
— 𝐀𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐧 𝐑𝐨𝐬𝐞 (@AaronBenRose) December 6, 2021
“My brother has a kid, my niece, and usually I don’t like carrying newborns, they’re just so fragile. She’s 2 months old & I’ve been putting off picking her up. Yesterday I picked her up & she peed on me. I dunno, maybe it was that.”
If this is the case, this might be the most strange motivating factor for a player having a good performance we’ve ever seen in the NBA. But in reality, Siakam was just flexing some of his comedic muscles, joking with the press as he probably didn’t have a clear-cut explanation for his solid showing.
Siakam has fallen off in the last few years, especially after he had 2 great seasons with the Raptors between 2018 to 2020. He won an NBA Championship in 2019, and then became an All-Star for the first time in his career the following season, even being voted into the starters pool for the big game.
But since then, Siakam has failed to live up to expectations and has not been able to replicate that level or those performances that got fans excited. This could be because of the pressure on him, as Masai Ujiri famously refused to trade Siakam for Paul George, ultimately leading to Kawhi Leonard leaving the franchise.
On top of that, the Raptors’ rebuild has meant that he isn’t surrounded by the kind of talent he was before. It is up to the Raptors to surround him with better players in order for him to step-up, and bring them back to prominence.
