It feels all or nothing. No player in this draft has the pure boom-or-bust potential of Bismack Biyombo. No player has more fans who love him, no one has more detractors.
He could be an All-Star, a dominant big man in this league. There is that much in him. But he could turn out to be a player glued to the bench, never able to utilize all that athleticism. He is that raw.
In a deeper draft, he is a worthwhile risk pick around 20. But that is not that this draft. Someone is going to take a risk around 10 and that could be a massive steal. Or a bust. And we will not know for five years.
Why take him? As always with Biyombo, the starting place is his measurements — 6’8” but with a downright freakish 7’6” wingspan. He can jump out of the building. He is strong and chiseled — he passes the eye test easily. He looks like an NBA player.
After that all the questions come up. His offense is raw, in the real sense of the word. Biyombo failed to impress at the adidas Eurocamp. Actually, that is an understatement. Words like disaster were thrown around as he missed shot after shot (0-5 on turnaround jumpers in the lane). But he also showed off all the athleticism people expected. He is the definition of project.
He comes out as the leading shot blocker in the Spanish ABC league (considered the second best league in the world). He also was an impressive rebounder and got to the line a lot. Basically, if the category was about athleticism and hustle, Biyombo looked impressive. Any category that was about skill… well, tougher sell. He is raw and needs a lot of work. Right now he is an unpolished Joel Anthony.
The other question — how old is he? Officially he is 18 years old, but there are countless scouts with doubts about that. A lot of people think he is actually in his early 20s. Coming out of the Republic of the Congo, you can just make your own guess.
Biyombo has a world of talent and can come into the NBA as a backup big and have some impact on defense and on the boards. But as for offense, he has to be on a team where the point guard creates easy offense for the bigs (like Steve Nash does in Phoenix). He may well grow into a good NBA player — he has the physical tools to be great, but that may be too much to ask — but fans will have to be patient with him. There will be flashes of what can be, the question is how will he develop.
Boom or bust. We don’t know.
What we do know is that he will go in the lottery. NBC/RotoWorld’s Steve Alexander has him going No. 11 to Golden State, as does DraftExpress and Chad Ford at ESPN.