Before the night of October 27, Haitian refugee Skal Labissiere was just another five-star recruit with some of the country’s best college basketball programs bending over backwards for his services. Then things took a strange turn, because on that Monday night, Labissiere announced that he would play his final season of high school basketball at Reach Your Dream Preparatory Academy, a school that doesn’t actually exist. The oddity of the news prompted the media to look a bit deeper into the situation, and in the interim, Labissiere’s recruitment has become a full-blown circus. Memphis finds itself right in the middle of it.
ESPN has already announced that the talented center will make his collegiate decision live on ESPNU this week, and seeing that the local product called the city of Memphis “his second home,” the Tigers have long been considered the favorite to land the 6’11” big man (although recent consensus has shifted to Kentucky). After the well-reported and thorough bomb that CBSSports’ Gary Parrish dropped today, though, the question has shifted from what school will land him to whether he will even play college basketball at all. Parrish got a prominent local AAU coach to go on the record saying that Labissiere’s guardian, Gerald Hamilton, asked him for advice on how to make money off of the prospect. Hamilton just so happens to have his fingerprints all over the nonexistent prep school at which Labissiere is supposed to play ,and Parrish also spoke with college coaches recruiting Labissiere who said Hamilton strongly insinuated an audience with the teenager would be granted in exchange for funding for his non-profit foundation, Reach Your Dream. The story ends with a college coach who is STILL recruiting him despite doubts as to whether Labissiere will ever play “one minute” in college, which, considering the source, speaks volumes.
On the surface, the reasons that Memphis is still recruiting him are obvious. Even if he turns out to be a one-and-done player, as expected, Labissiere is a local product, a game-changing talent, and a future NBA Draft pick. Josh Pastner has pursued the big man hard, and he would be crazy not to. But now that all of this condemning evidence has leaked, why should Memphis even go through motions anymore? Why fill a scholarship and roster spot for a high school player whose recruitment is already being investigated by the NCAA? Labissiere has said that skipping college and playing overseas for a year is a viable option, and Memphis has more to worry about than the shaky eligibility of a player who will only be on campus for a few months anyway.
The sad thing is that Memphis may be better served washing its hands of an incredible talent who is, by all accounts, a friendly and humble 18-year-old that genuinely doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. This story is probably great fuel for larger debates on the influence of guardians and street agents in college basketball as well as the stupidity of the NBA age limit, but those arguments are better left for people who understand the topics better than me. What I do know is that I was excited for Thursday. I was excited for Labissiere because he would have been fun to watch next season. I was excited for Memphis to potentially land a game-changing recruit. And I was excited for the AAC, which sorely needs an influx of NBA Lottery-type talent.
Now I am just left asking myself the same question Memphis fans are probably asking themselves — what’s the point?