PORTLAND -- Isaia Cordinier always had a dream. No, this wasn't the overarching dream from wanting to be the next great NBA player from France -- although that is certainly on his mind. Rather, this one was much more simple back when he was 17 years old.

After signing his first professional contract -- with Evreaux in the French Pro-B League -- the smooth 6-foot-5 guard from the south of France wanted to get a tattoo. Particularly, he wanted the tattoo to be a tribute to his family with a thank you to his father, Stephane, for pushing him There was only one problem: his dad -- an Olympian handball player in the 1996 games -- wasn't necessarily on board with the plan. Eventually he relented, but only with one condition.

"He came to me and said that he knew I was going to get a tattoo even if I don't want you to," Cordinier told CBS Sports. "'So I will give you the money to do it for my 18th birthday,' he said. 'But before, I want to see it.'"

Even though Cordinier tried his best to tell his father that it was a surprise, Stephane won and forced Isaia to show him the tattoo. It was a basketball with rays of sunlight around it, with the thank you message to his father and a lion inside to represent his mother and sister, each of whom were born under the astronomical sign of Leo.

"(Isaia) wanted it to be a surprise for me," Stephane Cordinier said about the event. "I had to ask again and again and when I saw what he wanted to tattoo I have to say it was so emotional to me."

Soon, the now-19-year-old Cordinier won't need his parents' money or consent for such a thing. Soon, he will likely be trying to forge a path in the NBA.

And listening to him speak, Cordinier actually has one person to thank for that: the same father that was less than thrilled about the permanence of a tattoo.

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Isaia Cordinier has been showing his moves in France. Getty Images

Since the tattoo, Cordinier done some other wild things with his appearance. He grew his hair out, curled it, and threw a golden blond streak down the middle much in the same style as New York Giants' receiver Odell Beckham Jr. But more importantly, Cordinier has continued to develop his game by taking steps toward the next level that have put him firmly on the NBA's radar and on the cusp of being a first round pick.

The 6-5 off-guard, currently No. 37 on the CBS Sports NBA Draft Big Board, is a rather interesting prospect for a wide variety of reasons. First and foremost, he's an athletic guy with the motor to want to dunk all over everyone. Basically, he plays hard all over the floor. He gets down in a defensive stance and uses active hands. He'll dive and slide to the ground if necessarily. Basically, he's a competitor, and that's the first thing that his current coach at Denain recognized about him.

"The first thing I saw was his intensity," coach Jean-Christophe Prat said to me over the phone. "He competes. He bleeds basketball. He has a natural aggressiveness on the court."

Then to top that off, he applies that athleticism and motor on the floor well. Bouncy is the best word to describe him, as it's not all that uncommon -- as you can see from this workout video taken by DraftExpress' Mike Schmitz -- to see his head rise to right around rim level.

Away from the rim, Cordinier has terrific feel for the game and scoring skill. First, he has a soft jump shot with terrific, albeit a bit slow, mechanics and great touch. He's hit 40.4 percent from 3 this season for Denain, and 45.3 percent from the field overall. That efficiency inside comes from the way he attacks.

Despite not necessarily being the best ball-handler at this stage, he can really attack the basket in part due to a quick first step but mostly due to the ability to change direction and speed well. He's a patient player who has potential in the pick-and-roll as a creator. His vision of the floor is terrific, even if he still doesn't quite know how to totally use it all yet due to his inexperience. This season, he had one major objective on the floor to improve from his coaching staff.

"The first thing I told him I told him was that he needed to learn how to use the ball screen as a modern guard," Prat told him. "He's not a 2, he's not a 1, he's a 2/1. It will be efficient for you and for the game. So what we really worked on this year was the ability to work around the ball pick and the different kind of ball-screens. Everyone is playing ball-screen. It was really important for him to implement that into his game. He has the natural aggressiveness. He has the natural shooting efficiency. If he's able to create better he will be a modern guard that is truly versatile."

He's still got a way's to go in terms of development though. He and his coach alluded to the ball-handling, where he's still rather loose with his dribble. His coach will say that he is a bit "naive" defensively in terms of his mindset and aggressiveness, and can occasionally get beaten due to jumping fakes or needlessly hand-checking. Generally, he just needs more experience and play in order to gain the necessary polish on his game that he'll need to play in the NBA. More than anything though, he needs to continue to mature in terms of his frame. Particularly, his lower half is rail thin still, and he still doesn't quite have the upper body strength to absorb contact regularly.

"To make the leap to the NBA, he needs to have an NBA body," Prat said. "At the moment, he's a bit too skinny. Sometimes in defense, when the player tries to drive him, he's not able to absorb the contact."

In fact, it's rather likely that Cordinier would be best utilized as a draft-and-stash type player so he can continue to mature. It might even make sense for him to pull out of the 2016 draft and try his luck next season after some further development. After all, at Nike Hoop Summit this season -- which he attended in April -- he merely had a solid outing and not a great one.

But those choices haven't been made yet. And lucky for him, he has another thing going for him. It's something he's always had in his game, and that his coach believes come both from within.

"The biggest point I want to emphasize is how much he loves basketball," Prat said. "Not just the life of a basketball player. Some people love the life of a basketball player, but do not love the game. If you do not love basketball, you cannot be successful at a high level. Isaia really loves basketball. For example, he's the one who would sleep with the sneakers and the ball. He's always the first one to show up to practice. It's really unique to be the coach of Isaia. He's really mature as a basketball player and a human being."

That maturity likely comes in part from his parents, both of whom were professional athletes. As noted above, his father played professional handball for a decade at the highest level, and his mother also played first division handball in France. Having his second child in 1999 as well as a bad experience in Germany convinced Stephane to end his career at 29 years old without any regrets outside of a disappointing fourth-place finish in the 1996 Olympics and not being selected for the team that won the World Championships in 1995. After retiring, he chose to settle in the south of France and become a handball coach -- something that has paid dividends for Isaia.

Unsurprisingly, Isaia began playing handball as his first sport but then switched to basketball full-time in 2003. Despite it being a different sport, his father being the coach that he was certainly rubbed off on Cordinier in the best ways possible.

"It helped a lot," Cordinier said. "He pushed me every day. I'd say I was a little tired and didn't want to go shoot, he'd say 'No, come shoot.' I'm so thankful to my parents, particularly my dad because he pushed me everyday. He'd say 'I don't want you to be a good player. I want you to be the best.' That's the way I grew up."

It certainly didn't hurt though that Isaia had a naturally inquisitive mind toward sport basically at birth.

"When he was 18 months, he would search in his toy box for the ball that would correspond to the sport he was watching on the TV screen and try to do same movements of the players," Stephane remembered about those days. "Curiously (at that age), he had a lot of success, too."

Indeed, athletics do run in the family for the Cordiniers. And while Stephane's accomplishments are certainly superb, it seems rather likely he'd trade them all for Isaia to have success at the world's highest level.

That's what Cordinier will have a shot to do on draft night and into the future, even if he's still something of a project going forward.