Siakam titled his piece in the Players’ Tribune ‘Toronto Forever‘ and discussed the love he felt from Raptors fans not just in Toronto but across the country, how he would have preferred to stay put and the pride he took in connected different eras of the Raptors.
“I thought about it hard. I tried to picture myself playing on the different rosters, living in the different cities, even wearing the different colors. I’m going through them in my head. And I’ll be honest what I answered. I was like, “Where do I see myself? I mean…… Toronto,” Siakam wrote.
“Toronto is just all I’ve known — and all I’ve wanted to know. I never asked for a trade. Maybe this sounds naive, but I felt I could be one of those dudes who spends his whole career on one team. That was my mentality even with the rumors.
“Like: I helped the Raptors win their first NBA title. So eventually I’ll help them win their second. I always took that as a given, you know? I took a lot of pride in being that guy who’s connecting the past and the future here, and keeping it all as one era.
“But I also realize it’s a business … and it’s their right to decide when it’s time for an era to end
Siakam said Toronto will always be his home — no matter where his career takes him.
“None of that changes what Toronto has meant to me, though, and what it will keep meaning. That’s the main thing I wanted to say to everyone: This is home. I put roots down for myself here — like, really, roots. I hope people reading this understand how big that was for me.
“Once I left Cameroon, I mostly bounced around boarding schools. Even at New Mexico State, I was only there for three years. So I never got that feeling of having a community around me during those parts of my life. And then most people know this, but my dad passed away while I was in college. We were very close, and it happened suddenly, and (because of my visa situation) I wasn’t even able to go to Cameroon for his funeral.
