To be fair, Siakam is just fairly inconsistent as a shooter. It's been bad this year, but he's not a 26% 3pt shooter. His true talent is probably around 32-33%
35.9%
29.7%
34.4%
32.4%
26.1%
And you're absolutely right, he'd be a negative step back with spacing, but he's also just a serious talent upgrade on both ends of the floor. Fox-Monk-Keegs-Siakam-Domas is talented enough to be a title contending starting 5. And I think would really have no problems gelling because of how talented a playmaking core everyone aside from Keegan is.
He’s been at 31.5% the last 4 seasons (counting this one).
But putting that aside for a second, I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I think Siakam is a talent upgrade and would make this team better than it is today (he’s just leaps and bounds better than Barnes) but the fit & spacing makes me question if it would be good enough to actually reach title contender level. And if it doesn’t, we’ve essentially capped out our team and have minimal assets to try and improve further.
Defenses really start scheming and adjusting to your roster in the playoffs. I could see the team looking really good in the regular season only to have teams try and take advantage of Sabonis’ and Siakam’s lack of shooting to neutralize our #1 scoring option (Fox).
You couple that “fit” risk, with the risk that he could walk in the off-season for nothing and the risk that we’d essentially have minimal assets to improve the team further, and it’s a no for me. At least in Anunoby’s case, I didn’t have the same “fit” concerns (and he’s many years younger than Siakam) making that risk a bit more worth it from my perspective.