The Portland Trail Blazers have gotten off to a shiny start in the 2026-27 season. Most players—Deni Avdija, Damian Lillard, Donovan Clingan—are getting rave reviews. A couple of them, most notably fourth-year guard Scoot Henderson, have struggled. Alongside him is mystery sophomore Yang Hansen. The center from China has looked better this year…maybe? He’s still not making a dent in Portland’s rotation and the (relative) curse of having been drafted as a fairly high first-rounder who doesn’t play still follows
him.
That’s made clear by this question from the Blazer’s Edge Mailbag:
Hi Dave,
Back in 2024 when the Blazers drafted Yang Hansen used their first round pick I was as confused as anyone. As the season started I was even more confused as he wasn’t playing. Why use a first round pick on someone you’re only going to play during garbage time? Coming off the recent Lakers game where he played over 20 minutes where he look quite good, why haven’t we been giving him a chance during games.
My question is do you think he has a future with the blazers or the NBA as a whole?
Fletcher
He might. We still don’t know yet. All we know is that he wasn’t ready for NBA minutes when the Blazers drafted him 16th overall in the 2025 NBA Draft. One season and seven games later, he’s still not really ready.
It’s important context that he was drafted in 2025 and not 2024, as your question asserts. I left the “oops” in there instead of correcting it because it does illustrate something that’s generally true of Hansen: people think he’s been around longer than he has.
Hansen has played in exactly 50 regular-season games. He’s been on the floor for 365 minutes. That would be about 10 appearances for a mainline starter. That’s nothing. We don’t really have a basis to judge yet, other than prima facie we can assert that he probably doesn’t merit more minutes yet, as he hasn’t, in fact, gotten them.
Hansen’s field goal percentages have gone up this year. Way up, in fact. It’s Small Sample Size Theater, but it exists.
Last year Hansen shot 31% from the floor and 11.9% from the three-point arc. That’s a disaster of epic proportions for a player whose strength was reported to be his offensive vision. Passing is a near-useless skill in the NBA if you can’t also score. Defenses will just lay off you, guarding against the pass, daring you to shoot. Hansen may have DaVinci-like chops on the offensive end for all we know. What good is painting the Mona Lisa if you tip six inkwells on the canvas after with that terrible accuracy?
This year has started better. Hansen is shooting 47.1% overall, 55.6% on a miniscule number of three-pointers attempted (9 total for the season). For a perimeter-based center, those numbers aren’t bad. That’s the first step in earning minutes. If you can’t even play to your strengths, you can’t play, period.
Rebounding is another huge issue for Hansen historically. The eye test doesn’t indicate much improvement, but he’s gone up from 7.9 to 11.6 rebounds per 36 minutes, nearly doubling his defensive rebounds per minute. That’s a huge improvement and a huge key.
But that, and defense, link to an issue that’s observable in many of Portland’s centers. I’m no expert, but they certainly don’t have a ton of arm definition. That’s not a fatal flaw in itself, but arms are among the easiest body parts to work. They tend to shape up as you work everything else in your upper body, even sometimes with core work. That’s just not there, which makes me wonder if the work is there. Hansen’s size and 7-foot frame say “NBA Player”, but his arms and shoulders scream, “Sandwich Artist”.
Like I said, he’s not alone in this. Up and down the non-Robert-Williams big man brigade, Portland lacks chiseled specimens. But if I were fighting for NBA minutes and a career as a center, one of the first things I’d do is check my strength, conditioning, and especially core strength. There’s a ceiling when you’re going against the best athletes in the basketball world without the basic conditioning that provides a tool belt for those improving skills.
In any case, it’s hard to argue that Hansen should get more minutes at this point. Personally, I think we’re still at the stage where we’re lucky he isn’t getting less. But we’ll see as the season develops. It’s not time to give up on him yet. Just put him on the “raised eyebrow and view with suspicion” list and let him play the minutes he gets. If his increased stats stick and parlay into bigger minutes, so be it. If not, Portland has a few options at that position still so they’ll be OK.
Thanks for the question! You can always send yours to blazersub@gmail.com and we’ll try to answer as many as possible!
