What you've seen is irrelevant for his NBA chances, sorry. He's not growing any shorter, losing any inches on his wingspan, or losing anything on his vertical leap (assuming he fully heals). Hurley famously said he has wall (lottery) potential. We think Karaban is pretty good, and Samson was playing better than him in the secret scrimmages (and seemingly a little worse in practice when Karaban was fully healthy).
If he shows the ability to shoot consistently at 6'10 and block shots with his 7'5" wingspan, he's going to get NBA interest, even if he's still pretty raw elsewhere. And if he has NBA interest, he'll probably leave to go play pro somewhere, whether or not that's NBA is TBD. Probably won't be after this year considering the injury, but very well could be after next once he fills out more and learns the game a bit more from Hurley and practicing against Sanogo/Karaban/Clingan. Reports are that he worked very hard this offseason, so we'd expect further improvement next year. It's extremely unlikely he'd stick around for 2 additional years after next year without going pro in some capacity.
Further, it seems unlikely that a top 60 recruit will be fine being a career backup (playing behind Karaban/Clingan and possibly Stewart for forseeable future years) in the transfer portal era, so it seems unlikely he'd stick around either way, so then his 5th year eligibility would be extremely moot and the team would be much more served by having him play this year as opposed to redshirting.
