At the start of the college basketball season, the word on Kentucky Wildcats freshman big man Skal Labissiere was that he was likely going to be a top-5 pick and that he had the potential to be something like the next Anthony Davis with his length and his overall ability as an offensive player. Pretty quickly into the season, though, it became abundantly clear that Davis was a ridiculous comp for the Haitian big man.
Even with that in mind, Labissiere did show drastic improvement throughout the year and still has that ton of potential that led to him being thought of so highly before the season began. His size is still there and he’s already starting to fill out his slight frame—though he definitely needs continued hard work in that regard so he isn’t broken in the NBA. Moreover, he still has solid timing as a rim protector and shot blocker in addition to being a versatile player on offense given his size and position.
Whenever you have a team like the Raptors picking in the lottery because of a traded pick even though they finished as the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference, I like for those teams to take a bit of a risk with the pick. As such, seeing Toronto look to add to their frontcourt depth with a project like Skal is highly intriguing and a move that I’d ultimately be intrigued to see the Raps pull the trigger on.
Next: No. 10 Bucks