Kristaps Porzingis, the Los Angeles Lakers, and why situation is everything

Kristaps Porzingis is continuing a revolution of big men in the NBA. His shooting ability, his length and the way he moves is redefining what big men can do. He is, as the nickname describes, a unicorn.

Unicorns, as the legend goes, are unique and special but easily missed if you are not looking for some magic. For players like Porzingis, it took teams taking a bit of a chance and believing in his abilities. Porzingis may still have turned into a decent player if he was groomed as a traditional center, but the exciting possibilities of what he can be would be lost to a team without imagination and willingness to let him be himself.

The Los Angeles Lakers looked hard at Porzingis and passed on the super talented big to draft D’Angelo Russell. Russell and the Lakers’ young players had their problems breaking in with Byron Scott’s coaching style last season. It also appears as though Scott’s influence and focus on what a “big” should be affected the Lakers’ decision in passing on Porzingis.

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According to Kevin Ding of Bleacher Report, the Lakers’ approach to working out and evaluating Porzingis put him in the box of big man and they ran him through drills that tested his “manhood,” as Ding puts it, and his physicality. It did not take much to see in Porzingis’ highlights and Las Vegas workout that this is not who he was as a player.

"Kupchak structured Porzingis’ private Lakers workout as essentially a challenge of his manhood rather than a validation of his gifts.In doing so, the Lakers lost sight of how truly unique this 7’3″ player could be, with skills at a size already forcing the NBA to adjust to him rather than vice versa.The Lakers, though, wanted to test Porzingis’ physicality, and especially his “bigness,” in that workout. They overvalued Porzingis’ need to prove he could play in the low post and wrongly equated his shaky stamina with his overall NBA readiness."

The things the Lakers wanted to test highlighted his weaknesses instead of illuminating the possibilities of his potential.

This is more than Charles Barkley or retired players grumbling about how the league has changed and the traditional post-up big man is gone. This is executives holding fast to antiquated notions of what a player should be rather than seeing what a player could be and accentuating those strengths.

Who knows what Porzingis would have become if the Lakers had drafted him? Perhaps his talent would have shined through. But this story highlights how important the team situation is to developing young players. Put a player in a box and that box begins to shape their talent.

There is no such thing as a sure thing in the NBA Draft. No surefire prospect.

It took Don Nelson unleashing Dirk Nowitzki for him to become a superstar. And who is to say any other coach would have the foresight to let a 7-footer shoot like him. It always takes risk for special players like these. But other players certainly could lament their situation for their failure to develop.

Ben McLemore was viewed as one of the top prospects in the 2013 NBA Draft. But he has had four coaches in four years. It was hardly an environment for him to develop. Not that he did anything to push his way into the rotation; that kind of disturbance can be the difference between being a role player and getting washed out.

Kwame Brown was perhaps too immature to make it in the NBA quickly. But the stories of Michael Jordan publicly trashing him early on in his career did not help. Even though Brown never lived up to the top overall pick, he still had a 13-year career. There was clearly something there. If he was drafted to a young Los Angeles Clippers team, would he have shined more or dwindled in their poor player development and locker room culture? If he was drafted to Atlanta (and traded to Memphis) would he have turned into Pau Gasol?

These are the questions we will never know.

Another player that came into the league with a lot of hope and scouts universally loved is Mario Hezonja. Not even two years into his career, and he already seems to be on the outs in the league. Hezonja was supposed to be a pure shooter. The trait to contain was his boastfulness. He was the European J.R. Smith, someone who would get hot and hit 3-pointers quickly and then tell you about it, dapping an assistant coach in the process.

It turns out Hezonja’s defensive weaknesses were too much for a team trying to win now to handle. And his shooting suffered as he tried to take in and deal with the pressure of a team desperate to win.

Again, Hezonja may have always been a bust. Or maybe he needed the opportunity to make mistakes and gain confidence rather than getting a quick hook from a coach and a team too desperate to win now.

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There are countless what ifs and stories like these. The responsibility falls to the player to let his talent shine through and find a way to make it work. The cream always rises to the top. But that mushy middle full of players who may not yet have an identity and need nurturing along with the right role to succeed? Their fates are very dependent on the situations they enter.

If Porzingis had been a Laker with the ideas Scott and that organization seemed to have about big men, who knows what kind of player he would become? The right environment is everything.