In case the Yang Hansen hype train needed even more fuel (it didn't), Damian Lillard just provided that at Trail Blazers media day, when he spoke about Hansen's skills and what he's noticed about the rookie early on:
"I think he can really play... The first thing that stuck out to me was like, his feel for the game... He just knows how to play. He knows the right pass to make... When he gets the ball in the paint.. He knows how to find that space, to get a quality shot off. He's physical... I like his personality, you know, his personality off the floor, you can tell he has personality on the floor... To me, that shows he has confidence..."
Those are all things that fans have already noticed about Yang — but it hits a little differently when you hear it from the franchise's all-time leading scorer. Of course, Lillard and Hansen won't get a chance to play together this year, as the former will miss the season with a torn achilles, but that won't stop fans from envisioning what a two-man game between this duo would look like.
Yang Hansen seems to have won over Damian Lillard
Along with every other of the 600,000-plus folks in PDX. The excitement about Yang has been growing since draft night, and it might reach a fever pitch in October as we close in on meaningful hoops. He's been a revelation, and that personality Lillard mentioned has been on full display, most recently in Yang's The Players Tribune piece. He rocks.
Will that hype continue throughout the season? That's hard to say. He will, after all, start his career as a backup center and a lot of his game is still very raw. This isn't to say that fans shouldn't be excited about Yang — they should be! I know I am! But it's also important to remember that rookies take more time to develop than we seem to remember. So if Yang struggles to create space, or turns the ball over more than fans would like to see, that shouldn't quell the excitement; it should merely remind us to be patient.
Damian Lillard is as honest as they come. He wouldn't talk up Yang unless he believed what he was saying. And what he's been saying is what the rest of us have been seeing, as well. Yang Hansen is the coolest.