Conor and I took some time away from the microphones, but We Like the Blazers is back on a weekly schedule! Today we started our summer recap, zeroing in on Simons’ and Ayton’s departure from the team and the drafting of Yang Hansen.
As part of that conversation, we touched on whether the Blazers have room for both Donovan Clingan and Yang Hansen at the center position:
I think it’s kind of hard to understand having Donovan Clingan and Yang Hansen. Like if you just extrapolate and you say, “Hey, they’re
both going to be pretty good to good or maybe even low-level great.” I mean, that’s a little… let’s just say they’re both going to be good. Remains to be seen. How do you have both of these players on your team at the same time? I don’t know. But then again, like you pick best player available and you kind of keep it moving.
We (specifically Conor) then talked about Hansen’s tantalizing on-court current skill and potential:
The translatable skills seem to be there. The shooting, the free throw stroke, let alone the three-point shot that he had some success with. The free throws were like on all Summer League. That was nice to see. Now, like the post moves and like the kind of drives, it’s like, okay, that is part of his game that was really great to see in China that like seemed like it’s going to take a little bit of time for him to develop that in the NBA.
But the passing alone, he’s already ready to be a playmaking hub. And the Blazers representatives when I talked to them, some of the people after draft night were like first impressions of this guy, and they were like the passing, you’re gonna like the passing, it’s just so advanced. And then so I went in looking like, okay, what’s his passing like? First play, like back door dime. And it was like he lived up to that hype that I had kind of had and that’s just that’s sometimes rare to have some something advertised and then not [sic] happen.
Obviously we talked about a lot more… click above to watch on YouTube or find We Like the Blazers on any pod catcher!
