The Toronto Raptors were having a fire sale.
And the Knicks and Indiana Pacers were the top customers.
About midway through the 2023-24 season, the Knicks acquired forward OG Anunoby — now their go-to defender — from the rebuilding Raptors for a package headlined by RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley.
Less than three weeks later, the Pacers acquired fellow forward Pascal Siakam from Toronto for a return that included three first-round picks. Siakam gave the ascendant Pacers an established scorer with championship pedigree, having served as the second option on the 2019 Raptors team that won the NBA Finals.
Now, Anunoby and Siakam are matched up against each other in the Eastern Conference Finals.
“It’s amazing that we’re both in a position where we get to compete at this level coming from Toronto,” Siakam said after Game 2. “It just gives you extra motivation to just continue to compete at a higher level. I know how hard of a competitor he is.”
Anunoby has been Siakam’s primary defender in the series, and vice versa.
Siakam scored 17 points on 7-of-16 shooting in the Pacers’ 138-135 overtime win in Game 1 as Anunoby mostly held him in check.
But in Indiana’s 114-109 win in Game 2, nobody on the Knicks, including Anunoby, had an answer for Siakam. Siakam demonstrated an array of offense moves en route to a playoff-career-high 39 points on 15-of-23 shooting in only 33 minutes. He scored Indiana’s first 11 points.
In the first two games, Siakam shot 5-of-11 when defended by Anunoby, including 2-of-4 from 3-point range, according to the NBA’s head-to-head tracking.
“He was the guy that got us going and got us through some difficult stretches,” Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle said of Siakam after Game 2. “It’s hard to score that number of points in a game like this, where you always have a physical matchup defensively and there’s a guy crashing and flying at the basket. But he did a phenomenal job.”
Anunoby was also part of Toronto’s 2019 title team but did not play during the championship run after undergoing an emergency appendectomy that April.
He was only 26 when the Knicks traded for him, and after reaching free agency last summer, Anunoby re-signed on a five-year, $212.5 million contract.
Anunoby scored 16 points in both Games 1 and 2 and shot 5-of-8 when guarded by Siakam.
Siakam is three years older than Anunoby, and he, too, was on an expiring deal when the Pacers acquired him. But Indiana identified him as a missing piece to provide production and leadership for a young roster.
The Pacers returned to the playoffs for the first time in four seasons last year and surged to conference finals. Siakam then led the Pacers with 20.2 points per game this past regular season.
“I’ve always been an enormous fan of his, how versatile he is both offensively and defensively,” Carlisle said of Siakam before Sunday night’s Game 3 in Indiana. “He had a lot of big games with [Toronto]. He had a 30-point game in the Finals, one of the games back in ’19, so his experience has been very important to us.”
The Pacers also envisioned Siakam as a part of their future, as they signed him to a four-year, $189.5 million maximum contract last offseason.
It’s paying off now.
“That’s why we brought him here,” Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton said after Siakam’s Game 2 eruption. “That’s what he’s here to do. He can get a bucket in so many different ways.”
