Donovan Clingan is quietly having a second-year breakout with the Portland Trail Blazers. He's benefited from an increased role following the departure of Deandre Ayton this past summer. But Clingan also deserves a ton of credit for improving his own game, addressing key areas such as conditioning and shooting.
He entered the season in much better shape with a goal of playing 30+ minutes a night. He's hovering around that at 27.4 minutes per game, a drastic increase from his 19.8 as a rookie. Better yet, Clingan's newfound conditioning level allows him to take on this starting role and play starter-level minutes without compromising his effectiveness.
He's quickly becoming one of the most impactful two-way centers in the league and, as a result, should be considered a foundational piece for the Blazers moving forward.
Blazers landed a foundational piece in Donovan Clingan
Clingan is a massive human being at 7-foot-2, 280 pounds, who is an elite drop coverage defender with his physical tools and underrated ability to anticipate plays. That's helped Portland establish a defensive identity this season, now that they have a legitimate defensive anchor to protect the paint for the majority of the game.
Those same traits have also helped the Blazers on the offense end as Clingan is already one of the best offensive rebounders in the association. He averages 11 total rebounds a game, and 4.4 (40%) of those are coming on the offensive end. That ranks top ten in the league in both categories.
Clingan's ability to impact winning without requiring the ball is a refreshing trait in a league filled with ball-dominant stars. It's also what makes him an ideal foundational piece, as you can easily construct your roster around that. We're seeing that firsthand this season with Deni Avdija and Shaedon Sharpe having the two highest usage rates on the team. Clingan is 10th on the roster at just 15.2%, yet has arguably been the second-most impactful player on the Blazers this season, behind only Avdija.
Clingan has also found ways to provide value on the offensive end with his floor spacing. He's shooting 30.7% from beyond the arc on 3.0 attempts a game, and while that's not a knockdown shooter by any means, it's respectable enough to the point where teams have to consider him a legitimate threat, allowing others to operate with more space.
He has been perfect in every way. There are aspects of his game he still needs to address, whether it's his rough hands, his ability to play in the short roll, or his ability to hold his own defensively out on the perimeter. But this is a 21-year-old who fell to the Blazers with the No. 7 overall pick in an extremely weak 2024 draft class. The fact that Portland was able to come away with a legitimate building block in that draft is a miracle and has given their rebuild a major boost.
In some ways, it was the very pick that established their entire identity, and that in itself is invaluable.