The Portland Trail Blazers moved on from their starting center this past summer, reaching a buyout agreement with Deandre Ayton. This turned out to be an addition-by-subtraction move, paving the way for Donovan Clingan's second-year breakout. Portland's former No. 7 overall selection already showed enough in his All-Rookie campaign to earn the starting role. But that decision looks better than ever, as Clingan is playing the best basketball of his promising young career.
In 15 games post-All-Star break, the Blazers' big man is averaging 15.3 points, 12.3 rebounds, 2.7 assists, and 2.1 blocks per game. Did we mention he's shooting 39.3% from beyond the arc on a high volume of 3.7 attempts per game?
There are only a handful of centers in the league capable of providing as much of a two-way impact as Portland's center. Clingan is arguably already a top-10 center in the league and only continues to get better at 22 years old. He's emerged as the second most important player in this entire Blazers rebuild, solidifying himself as a building block alongside Deni Avdija.
Donovan Clingan is proving Blazers right to build around him
Analytics will tell you the two best shots in basketball are a three-pointer and anything around the rim. Portland somehow has a center that now thrives in both areas. Clingan's elite rebounding and rim protection were to be expected, but the two-way impact he's had on this team with his floor spacing has been invaluable. This was someone who shot 28.6% on just 0.7 attempts per game last season. We keep waiting for Clingan to regress to the mean, but the more he increases his sample size, the more we believe this is simply the player he is now.
Clingan deserves a lot of individual credit for this major second-year breakout, particularly when it comes to improving his shooting and conditioning level. He made a point of improving his conditioning over the summer, and you can see how much that has helped this season.
But the Blazers also deserve credit for making Clingan a priority. This is a team that had playoff aspirations entering the season and easily could've kept Ayton on their roster. Although they got him to forfeit $10 million of his remaining salary, they are literally paying to not have him around. Despite Ayton's flaws, that's less about Ayton and more about how much they believed in Clingan.
The timing of Clingan's individual improvement and increased role is aligning well. Knowing Clingan, this breakout was likely always inevitable. But Portland certainly helped accelerate the process by moving on from Ayton this past offseason, a decision that looks better than ever given how their new starting center has played as of late.