The Brooklyn Nets chose Egor Demin from BYU with the 8th pick in the NBA Draft. While that’s not particularly noteworthy, it was a mildly shocking choice that marked the first reach in this year’s draft. However, it certainly wouldn’t be the last—or biggest—reach of the draft.
That honor belonged to your Portland Trail Blazers, who traded back with Memphis to 16. Their choice was Hansen Yang, a center prospect from the Chinese Basketball Association. Per HoopsHype, Yang’s aggregate mock draft position amongst all major publications was 35. To call that a reach is getting a little loose with the language.
Blazers' Hansen Yang reach has more questions than answers
There are a couple of ways to look at the vision here: One, and perhaps most importantly, Yang worked out for nine teams in the process, and only a handful of those had the opportunity to pick Yang ahead of Portland. Only one of those—Brooklyn—believes they’re at the beginning of a rebuild. Toronto and Phoenix are unsure.
Perhaps most importantly, Yang had at least one workout with the Blazers that we know about. In that workout, he was matched up against Asa Newell, Liam McNeely, Rasheer Fleming, Jase Richardson, and Will Riley—all draft picks this year. Clearly, Yang stood out even amongst that group.
Portland later worked out Kasparas Jakucionis, Derik Queen, Egor Demin, and Collin Murray-Boyles, among other prospects that may have worked out secretly. Brooklyn and Toronto made the choice easier for Portland, but Yang was the pick—the workout and interviews must have been immaculate.
At the NBA Combine, Yang measured well and performed just as well in the scrimmages, including one game with 11/6/6 with a block on 75% shooting and shooting 5-of-7 at the stripe in just 18 minutes. His other game was equally as fruitful from a scoring perspective, not as much for the peripherals.
The negative part of the vision remains: Why? Why did the Blazers trade back to 16 to draft Yang when he was widely projected as a second-round pick? Why did the Blazers pick a player who can absolutely not share the court with last year’s pick, Donovan Clingan?
Now that the question of the draft is over, many more questions remain. It’s tough to score this as negative given assistant GM Mike Schmitz’s track record, but the Clingan redundancy is a real head scratcher.
GRADE: C-