This is a tale of seven seasons, but also just one night. A story of one person who was meant to start seminary school but happened to tag along to a basketball camp when he was 11, and the 628 people who coordinated with the NBA team he played with for seven seasons to wear his jersey again on one special night.
It was a continuation of theme from a piece Siakam wrote for the Player’s Tribune following his trade. In it, he shared that when he first started hitting the floor for the Raptors he’d spend a few furtive seconds as the national anthems played scanning the crowd, searching for jerseys with his number, 43. Siakam had played a crucial role in winning the Raptors G League arm, Raptors 905, a title in 2017, but his familiarity with fans of the the parent club took a little while. When he did finally spot his jersey for the first time he couldn’t contain himself.
“If you ever wondered, ‘Why’d Pascal look like he’s about to fist pump during the anthem one night as a rookie?’ there you go,” he wrote.
All teams handle homecomings in their own ways. There’s always more on the backend of someone’s return, especially if they’ve had a long tenure. When DeMar DeRozan or Kyle Lowry come back to Toronto, they idle with arena staff and security, stopping to catch up with just about everyone who made up their ecosystem in the city. Most public presentations for first-time returns feature nostalgic video montages played over the jumbotron on a game’s first timeout, and the Raptors have had their fair share of tear-jerkers. Like when Vince Carter, after seasons of returning to a chorus of boos, had the jeers abruptly turn to cheers in 2014, like the fans simultaneously decided it was enough. Carter cried, so did everyone else. Kawhi Leonard got his ring and a slick video treatment of his huge glowing footsteps outlined on the floor to mimic the ones he made to make The Shot, as all the lights in the arena went out. This month, and less than a week apart, the Raptors welcomed back both Fred VanVleet and Siakam.
Siakam’s return aptly came on Valentine’s Day, and the entire Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) organization was involved in a tribute that went beyond the jumbotron for an orchestral pull on the heart strings.
“We saw Pascal’s comment on the idea of coming to our venue and seeing his number, and it slowly going away, and we wanted him to know that he had such an impact on our team, our city, our country, that even though after many years the number might fade, it’s still near and dear in our heart,” Taylor Mansillo, Senior Brand Manager of the Raptors, said on a call the morning after the game.
Mansillo, and what would turn into a small army of departments across MLSE, started to brainstorm on a tribute within the tribute. Something that would be impactful for Siakam and the fans, but executable in the sliver of time available before and just after tip-off. They knew there’d be plenty of fans in the arena that night wearing Siakam jerseys, but it would be impossible to highlight them all. There was also a fairly good chance that with his head down in timeouts, or off the floor at halftime, Siakam wouldn’t be looking up to the video board to see.
“We thought, what if we make it one big space where he notices them all up front?” Mansillo recalls.
Section 119 in Scotiabank Arena is in the lower bowl of seating, smack dab in the middle of one of the long sides. Primo seats, in other words. Also what would prove prime emotional real estate. The Raptors wanted to coordinate it so every person sitting in that section, all 628 of them, would be wearing a Siakam jersey. They also wanted to make sure the selection of jerseys spanned Siakam’s career as a Raptor.
“We did jerseys throughout our years because he’s had impact for many years on this organization, from the G League to now,” Mansillo says. “That was really our intent: how do we make sure he sees it in a loud way, to make sure he know how much he means to us, versus him searching for them in the crowd.”
“It was a little bit of working within the organization to track down the right number of jerseys, the mix of jerseys, and making sure that we could get them into the right hands,” Terri Mattucci, Sr. Director of Strategy & Growth for MLSE, explains.
The MLSE retail team was tapped to find the right inventory and editions of jerseys to create the right visual mix, but once they were secured there was still the step of getting them into individual fans’ hands, and getting those fans into their seats early.
“One of the things we leveraged was actually the ‘Know Before You Go’ emails,” Mattucci says, referencing an email blast that goes out to Raptors ticket holders before games. The organization has information on every section and seat, who sits in them and when, so was able to target everyone who would be spending their Valentine’s Day in 119. The ticketing department was also involved in making individual calls to reiterate the message, which was: ‘Are you coming to the game? You probably should. You should also get to your seat early.’
“They walked into the night knowing we were going to do something fun for Pascal, knowing that they were going to be involved and had a big part of contributing to the tribute for him,” Mattucci says.
To actually get all those jerseys onto fans, a card was left with instructions on each seat in the section (which also took coordination from the pre-game Game Ops team, who tuck cards into seats and special occasion giveaway shirts over them well before warmups). The instructions let fans know which section of the concourse to visit to get their jersey, and when to put it on. We’re not even at national anthems yet.
“The biggest part that we had to figure out was our anthems,” Anton Wright, Creative Director & Executive Producer of Game Presentation, chimes in.
This seems obvious, but just in case: because the Raptors play in Canada, two national anthems are played before every game. For that reason, anthems typically start earlier than in other markets. For a 7:30pm game, anthems are performed at 7:23pm, outside of the broadcast window. For this game, the Raptors needed permission from the NBA, their broadcast partners, basketball operations, and the Pacers to bump the anthems ahead.
The reason was because the first sequence in Siakam’s tribute was going to start then, with the “anthem buddies,” kids from local Toronto groups that accompany players onto the floor during the anthems, all wearing his jersey. MLSE wanted to make sure the arena was full and fans would see that first nod to their 2x All-Star, and that the broadcast captured it along with Siakam’s reaction.
At tip-off, Wright’s in-game crew crept in and around Section 119, signaling fans to don their jerseys. First timeouts, especially in a game like this one, tend to happen quick.
The montage itself was great. It traced Siakam’s career from lanky G Leaguer, to All-Star, to NBA Champion, with off-court footage of him singing, laughing, and goofing around. As it played, photos and quotes were also superimposed all over the hardwood to compliment the tribute. When the lights were supposed to go up, with Siakam stepping out on the floor to wave to massive applause, they didn’t. Not over the entire arena, anyway.
“For the moment, we really wanted to showcase that area,” Wright says excitedly. “We don’t usually spotlight certain areas, we keep the crowd pretty dark and the focus is on the court and our flags, but we wanted to spotlight that area to hopefully have Pascal see it, [and] also all of our fans in the venue to be able to see.”
Along with the arena’s lighting and sound operators, the in-arena camera crew took special shots to showcase Section 119 and the Championship banner, with cuts back to Siakam to capture his reaction.
“To see that whole section with my jerseys, that almost got me right there,” Siakam said later, smiling in his postgame press conference. “I could never really have dreamed of that. To have that, it means a lot, so I appreciate everyone, just for everything.”
“It was a sprint,” Mansillo says, when asked about the execution of the tribute from start to finish. “From the moment we found out he was traded to reading the [Player’s Tribune] quote, and trying to think of unique and different ideas that we can show and honor him. Ways that leagues or other teams haven’t done in the past.”
“Definitely a sprint,” Wright echoes. “But like the Kawhi moment and all those great moments throughout Raptors history, it’s something you’re always going to remember. The look on Pascal’s face during the anthem or watching the video, the fans faces when they received the Pascal jersey, those are things you’re never gonna forget.”
Still, what’s it like to have jam-packed days and long nights of planning and executing a brief moment like that, and then have the moment be, probably too briefly, over?
“On our end, it’s a moment in history,” Mansillo says, smiling. “I think everything we do in sports is a second or a moment in time. So we cherish those moments. We know it’s going to be fast and we know the after that moment he becomes a Pacer for us officially, so seeing that moment, to me, is a frozen moment in time.”
All in all, Mansillo confirms it took “almost every organization within MLSE” coming together to pull off the tribute. From partnerships to ticketing, memberships, the entire marketing arm from creative to content, game presentation and brand; the Raptors own PR staff and players. A reflection not of how many people it needed to take, but how many wanted to be part of something for someone who meant so much to the organization.
“One thing I’d say is moments like this are really special for our city,” Mattucci notes. “Pascal’s interview with the Tribune, talking about what the city meant to him — this is our way of showing what he means to our city, and what he means to our country. Raptors are really Canada’s team, and the players that come here leave imprints on us not just for the years they’re here, but to become a part of our history and a part of our story.
That’s really something that we want to elevate and the beauty of being in our positions — to enable that for him and let others be a part of it.”
The game itself was also something of an official launching point for its next iteration; the last before the All-Star break, with Scottie Barnes headed to Indianapolis for his first All-Star Game and its most impactful former players now settled into their new teams. Siakam reflected on that feeling in his postgame, noting Toronto “was known” as the place he wanted to be despite all the trade talk of the last season, “For me, coming back, it was hard. But also I was just happy, happy to be there,” he said.
Despite that swirl of emotion, Siakam admitted with a laugh that “when everyone was telling me, Oh man, so happy to see you, in my head it was just like, I gotta get a win. I can’t lose this game.”
The Pacers did, taking the win in a close match. Asked whether the MLSE team considered the impacts of the night on the outcome of the game, Mattucci jokes, “We almost got him!”
They don’t anymore, but the genuine teamwork of so many proves that the team and the city, in their own moments of reflection and no matter how brief, always will.
