Labissiere is coming off his freshman season at Kentucky, where he averaged 6.6 points, 3.2 rebounds and 0.3 assists.
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NEW YORK — In the class of 2015, two prep prospects topped the rankings of just about every recruiting service. One was Australian-born, Florida-based playmaking forward Ben Simmons, whose do-everything point forward game elicited comparisons to LeBron James and Lamar Odom. The other was Haitian-born, Memphis-based 7-footer Skal Labissiere, a tantalizing toolkit projected as "the fever dream of the modern NBA GM, a big man who can both shoot from the perimeter and block shots."
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After an up-and-down year at LSU, Simmons' stock remained high enough that the Philadelphia 76ers made him the No. 1 pick in the 2016 NBA draft on Thursday night. After an up-and-down year at Kentucky, Labissiere had to sit, stew and wait until near the end of the first round to hear his name called, going to the Sacramento Kings with the 28th pick, which Vlade Divac and company picked up in an earlier draft-night trade with the Phoenix Suns.cheap nba jerseys
It was a somewhat stunning fall for a player who — despite averaging just 6.6 points, 3.1 rebounds and 1.6 blocks in 15.8 minutes per game during his lone year in Lexington, being dinged for struggling with contact and lacking the strength to bang with other 7-footers — was still pegged as a top-10 pick by Jonathan Givony of The Vertical, and invited with his family to the green room at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, a spot typically reserved for players expected to go in the lottery. (It was not, however, the most precipitous such plummet; Michigan State big man Deyonta Davis, projected as the No. 10 pick by DraftExpress, fell all the way out of the first round, going to the Memphis Grizzlies with the 31st overall selection, the first of the second round.)amynfljerseys.ru cheap nba jerseys
"It was tough at first," Labissiere told reporters during his post-draft press conference. "But one thing about the league — one thing about all of us now — everything starts over for all of us. We all start over once we get to [the NBA] level. I'm excited to get to work. I know I have a bright future ahead of me."
Throughout Labissiere's long, long night, his green-room companion and college coach, Hall of Famer John Calipari — whose Kentucky program produced two more first-rounders this year, bringing the total to 21 since he took over the Wildcats in 2009 — tried to keep the 20-year-old's spirits up.
"[He kept saying] just that, 'You're good. You're going to be fine. You should use that as fuel to get better,'" Labissiere said. "He told me how good I was."
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But despite Calipari's salesmanship and Labissiere's tantalizing measurables, the sheer lack of productivity during his freshman season — he scored fewer than 10 points in all but two games over a 2 1/2-month span from mid-December through late-February — ultimately seemed to scare prospective suitors away on Thursday.
“I think he’s the most difficult prospect to figure out in this whole draft for me because he’s got some really solid selling points," ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said, according to Kyle Tucker of SECCountry.com. "He’s got an excellent shooting touch, his timing is good, he can block shots. But he didn’t do it in games, and he got pushed around by guys that got pushed around by other people. That was a little bit surprising to me, frankly.”
His selection, then, is an upside play — a gamble that, eventually, Labissiere's soft touch and shot-blocking will pair with increased bulk and an improved understanding of the game to produce a player capable of fulfilling the promise of that five-star high-school rating. It's a bet that he's going to put in the work to see the results, and that the difficulty holding up against more physical competition doesn't belie a lack of toughness.cheap nba jerseys
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How exactly Labissiere fits into the plans of the Kings — who, as we discussed earlier Thursday, already employ a robust big-man rotation featuring All-Star center DeMarcus Cousins, 2015 lottery pick Willie Cauley-Stein, 2015 free-agent signing Kosta Koufos and 2016's No. 13 overall pick, 7-foot-2 Greek teenager Giorgios Papagiannis — remains to be seen. For now, though, Labissiere seems content to take his slide in stride, to rely on his skills and work ethic to find a way to earn opportunities under new Kings head coach Dave Joerger, and to view his arrival in Sacramento — a team that hasn't made the playoffs in 10 years — as a blessing rather than a curse.amynfljerseys.ru
"At first, I was a little nervous, but after a while, it was just — I was excited about the whole thing," Labissiere said. "I know that God has a plan for me and that I was going to fall into the right place, right team."
Before the draft, he said he "firmly [believes] that two, three years from now, maybe five years from now, I can be the best player in this draft because of my skillset.” After a night that could've shaken any young man's self-confidence, Skal Labissiere remained resolute.amynfljerseys.ru cheap nba jerseys
"I still believe it," he said Thursday night. "I'm about to go to work, and I'm going to control what I can control."
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