Donovan Clingan has been one of the bright spots for the Portland Trail Blazers this season. While his breakout has been huge for this rebuild, we can't help but wonder where that leaves rookie Yang Hansen.
Both centers are flat-footed and struggle to guard out on the perimeter, constantly getting exposed in drop coverage. As a result, Tiago Splitter can't play a double-big lineup.
It remains to be seen how Hansen's career pans out, as there is a wide range of outcomes. But it's hard to envision Hansen becoming better than Clingan, who is already looking like a top ten center in his second season.
So did Portland make this unconventional first-round draft gamble for a backup center?
Donovan Clingan's breakout clouds Portland's plans for Yang Hansen
Hansen is a polarizing prospect, and we understand both bullish and bearish cases for his development. Regardless of where you fall in that spectrum, it's becoming increasingly hard to see how this pick pays off with Clingan standing in the way for, hopefully, the next decade-plus.
There was a high-risk, high-reward nature with the Hansen selection. In general, we wanted Portland to swing for the fences in the draft to raise the ceiling of this rebuild and catch up in star power in the Western Conference. They did just that with this pick last summer, but the positional overlap is getting in the way of those returns.
The risk of missing the Hansen selection is the opportunity cost of missing out on prospects like Cedric Coward. The player Portland traded away to land Hansen is currently ranked sixth in the NBA Rookie Ladder. We can't compare Coward and Hansen directly as prospects. One is an immediate impact rookie, while the other was always going to be a long-term project. But we can compare how the two would fit on this roster, and it's clear Coward's floor spacing on the wing would've been a more seamless fit.
Maybe the Blazers' front office was right, and Hansen reaches that tatanlaziing ceiling that justifies the roster imbalance. But having to fight Clingan for minutes the remainder of his Blazers tenure is only going to make that outcome increasingly unlikely. And even if it does come to fruition, Portland won't be able to fully cash in on the reward by playing their two centers together; they'd ultimately be forced to trade one or the other.
Positional overlap made more sense at the beginning of this Blazers rebuild. But this is year five, meaning they should be transitioning away from stockpiling assets and toward figuring out how their building blocks fit together. Clingan has become a legitimate building block and should've already been considered one after his impressive All-Rookie campaign last year.
With that being the case, it's hard to see how this plays out for Portland other than taking an unnecessary gamble to land a backup center.