Nobody knows how much, or even if, Skal Labissiere will play for the Trail Blazers this season.



And while sitting the bench is not an ideal scenario for the 6-foot-11 big man, Labissiere is not complaining. After all, he considers himself lucky to be alive.



In 2010, when he was 13, Labissiere was on the third floor of his family’s home in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit.



“It went from being sunny out to being pitch dark,” Labissiere remembers.



Pitch dark because he was buried under the rubble of his home. When the earthquake began, he ran to his mother, who was sitting in a chair. As the house collapsed and plummeted to the ground, a wall fell on Labissiere’s back as he huddled over his mother.



He was stuck in that position — huddled over his mom with a concrete wall on him — for more than three hours as his father and neighbors dug through the rubble. He lost feeling in his...