Inside the decade-long plan to bring Victor Wembanyama to NBA glory

PARIS -- IN A SMALL park in Rive Gauche, the Parisian district known for its art and culture, is one of the highest murals in Europe, an 88-foot old stairwell that has been turned into a colorful collection of squiggly figures designed to cheer up patients in the nearby children's hospital.

Located just a mile southeast of the Eiffel Tower, Victor Wembanyama has enjoyed this little corner of the city since he was a child, a beacon of color and happiness in an area that is otherwise drab and melancholy. The mural's artist, the late American pop art icon Keith Haring, picked it for this very reason, wanting to lift spirits. Haring was Wembanyama's favorite artist as he was growing up and falling in love with art and basketball.

The title of the work is "Tower." Wembanyama, a 7-foot-5 teenager who has been riding an international hype train over the past five years, understandably relates.

Basketball prospects and art are both subjective -- beauty is often in the eye of the beholder -- but the rarest are those where there's universal agreement.

Wembanyama is the most anticipated prospect in a generation, making Tuesday's NBA draft lottery (8 p.m. ET, ESPN) an event with potentially historic consequences.