The NBA is increasingly becoming a more global league. Last season, they had a record-tying 125 international players in the league, coming from 43 different countries. Since 2019, the league MVP has been an international player, and two of the past three No. 1 overall draft selections have also been international.
The rest of the world is catching up to the United States in basketball, and perhaps no better example of that is the Portland Trail Blazers' roster.
Portland tied the Oklahoma City Thunder with the most international players in the league in 2024-25, as both teams had seven on their roster. Dalano Banton (Canada) and Deandre Ayton (Bahamas) are no longer on their roster heading into the 2025-26 season, but Portland will still be receiving an increased international audience thanks to the selection of Yang Hansen.
Yang Hansen brings unprecedented international attention to Blazers
Ben Golliver of The Washington Post reported in July that 5.2 million people in China tuned in to watch Hansen's summer league game against the Memphis Grizzlies on Tencent's free broadcast. Golliver also provides context, making this number even more jaw-dropping: No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg's debut with the Dallas Mavericks on ESPN had 1.1 million American viewers.
There are over 1.4 billion people who live in China, and it's safe to say a portion of them have been converted into Blazers fans following the Hansen selection. After all, Hansen is the first player from China to be selected in almost a decade, with Wang Zhelin and Zhou Qi being taken in the second round of the 2016 draft. He's also the fourth player to be drafted directly from the Chinese Basketball Association, joining Yao Ming (2002), Yi Jianlian (2007), and Emmanuel Mudiay (2015).
Hansen was widely projected to be a second-round selection, but the Blazers took a gamble on him after trading back with the Memphis Grizzlies for the No. 16 overall pick. It was as far back as general manager Joe Cronin was willing to go to the point where he still felt comfortable that Hansen would be on the clock. Some have speculated that this move was financially motivated, with the Blazers up for sale (at the time) and looking to increase the value of the franchise. However, Hansen's summer league play immediately proved that this was, in fact, a basketball decision.
The "Chinese Jokic" comparisons are legitimate. Hansen can do things few seven-footers in the league can wth his rare combination of size, footwork, court vision, and overall basketball IQ. He's not only a high-upside player, but he also has the personality to make him such an entertaining player to follow throughout his career. On the court, he still has a long way to go before becoming a superstar, or even a starter, for that matter. But in many ways, Hansen is already a star.
The Blazers, and the NBA as a whole, are going to receive increased viewership because of who Hansen is as both a person and player. He's already drawing millions without even playing a meaningful regular-season game yet. And that's with Hansen just being a role player at this point in his career. If he also becomes a star on the court -- and from what he's shown at summer league, there's a chance he will -- it'll break the league.