The Portland Trail Blazers took the court at the Thomas & Mack Center for the team’s first Summer League action of 2025, featuring draft pick Yang Hansen alongside Rayan Rupert, last year’s late-season two-way contract player Sidy Cissoko, and recent two-way signee Caleb Love.
The Blazers dismantled the Golden State Warriors by 33 points, with the game out of hand early as the Blazers controlled the flow of the entire game from wire-to-wire. While the victory was a great team win, some players stood out from the crowd:
Stud: Rayan Rupert
While all eyes were rightly on Yang Hansen, Rayan Rupert was quietly the best player on the floor. From near the opening tip, Rupert looks poised to make a leap in his third year. In just 23 minutes, Rupert made it to the line 11 times, including eight in just 15 minutes of first-half play. His defensive output was just as impactful, with several good reads and pickpockets.
He certainly looks like he’s elevated his play since even three months ago, when we got an extended look at him down the stretch. His handle is a little loose, something that he’s had to work on since his first NBA minutes, and seeing him get his pocket picked repeatedly in the first summer league game is a little concerning, but turnovers are part of the Summer League oeuvre and nobody should be particularly worried.
Stud: Yang Hansen
Yang played exactly as advertised; coach Billups famously said in his introductory press conference that he wouldn’t hesitate to put Yang in a game “right now,” and he certainly looks ready to make some bench impact in his first season.
If nothing else, Yang’s passing from the post is already a cut above current NBA players; Yang’s first play was hitting a cutting Sidy Cissoko for a dunk, and it immediately became clear that the team was running multiple similar plays in practice.
While Yang’s perimeter defense was a little iffy, his rim defense already looks elite at the Summer League level—he had three blocks in the game, but a fourth was waved off with a late whistle, and a fifth was called a rather questionable foul.
Yang’s screen setting was mostly a mixed bag, but his good screens were good. Yang is able to move defenders at will; it’s clear that he possesses above-average strength, and he’s not afraid of contact.
Near the tail end of Yang’s night, it was refreshing to see him get the Clingan treatment, where paint intruders cartoonishly hit the brakes after seeing Yang on the horizon. Yang’s biggest weak point is his stamina; he was gassed after 19 minutes of sporadic play, and a spate of fatigue-induced fouling followed.
While he won’t see that many minutes if his first season goes according to plan, it would be nice to know he could fill in for any random Clingan injury.
Stud: Caleb Love
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night was Caleb Love, a player who went undrafted but signed with the Blazers on a two-way deal. Love bounced around between colleges and gathered a reputation for having a questionable shot diet, taking anything and everything thrown his way.
In spite of that, Love looked like an NBA player in his 23 minutes; his confidence is a cut above much of the shakier-handed Summer League players. Rather unlike his reputation, a majority of Love’s shots were very within himself, taking only a couple heavily-guarded shots and predictably missing both.
Perhaps the biggest key to Love’s NBA minutes will come because he looked so good playing with Yang Hansen; Love was feasting on Yang’s drop-handoffs and massive screens for much of the game.
Dud: James Bouknight
It’s hard to find much negative to say in the first Summer League game that the Blazers won by 33, but Bouknight was the wellspring of the Blazers’ most head-scratching plays of the game.
A lottery pick back in 2021, Bouknight has been mostly out of the league for over a year and playing for the Blazers’ Rip City Remix, and looked almost as raw as his 2021 Summer League debut. Throughout the game, Bouknight made some baffling reads that included stealing an alley-oop from Sidy Cissoko.
To his credit, he performed well otherwise and had the highest plus-minus on the team at +32, but the questionable decision-making forced the overall performance back to an average level.
The Summer League Blazers have their next game tomorrow night (July 12) against the Memphis Grizzlies.