The Yang Hansen Era Has Begun
The Trail Blazers introduced the No. 16 overall pick in a press conference on Friday.
The Rose Garden Report is a fully independent publication providing coverage of the Portland Trail Blazers you can’t get anywhere else. Purchasing a premium subscription gives you full access to all articles and ability to participate in mailbags, as well as helping to cover travel costs and other expenses to bring you the best coverage possible.
📍TUALATIN, Ore. — This is going to be different.
Every part of it, for everybody.
Chauncey Billups has never coached through a translator before, although he says he's "excited about the challenge."
Sean Highkin
Joe Cronin has never made a draft pick this far outside of consensus in his career. His last three lottery picks—Shaedon Sharpe, Scoot Henderson and Donovan Clingan—were, if not chalk, close to it. This one will be scrutinized and picked apart on a day-to-day basis more even than Henderson was after his arrival brought about Damian Lillard's exit.
And I've never been interviewed for a documentary on the day of an introductory press conference for a rookie most fans don't know anything about. But that happened on Friday.
The arrival of Yang Hansen in Portland is going to be an adjustment for everybody around the Trail Blazers organization, on and off the court.
I've been covering the league long enough to see many instances of a player from a country that doesn't produce a lot of NBA players bringing an influx of attention and coverage.
I'll never forget, in my former life as a Bulls beat writer, a Finnish journalist asking Gregg Popovich for his thoughts on Chicago's new rookie, Lauri Markkanen. Popovich looked at the guy like he was crazy, then took a beat and realized he was from Finland, and gave an incredibly detailed and thoughtful answer about Markkanen's potential.
The Denver Nuggets are, at this point, the official team of Serbia thanks to Nikola Jokic's dominance. My friends at DNVR produced a documentary a couple of years ago in which they, simply by virtue of covering Jokic's team, were treated as celebrities during a trip to Belgrade.
More recently, there were a few Belgian journalists that parachuted into Portland during Toumani Camara's rookie season. And after the Blazers traded for Deni Avdija last year, the team became a national topic of interest in Israel.
China is a different ballgame entirely.
You don't need me to tell you how basketball-obsessed they are, ever since Yao Ming became a global icon in the early 2000s. A country with a population of 1.4 billion has more NBA fans than there are people in the United States, period. Six years ago, the league lost hundreds of millions of dollars because of a tweet from then-Rockets general manager Daryl Morey. Many NBA players take annual marketing trips to China and enjoy massive popularity there. Henderson did it last summer with Puma. (He called the trip "fire," for what it's worth.)
Last July, the Blazers' Summer League team included Chinese prospect Yongxi "Jacky" Cui. They intended to bring him to training camp in the fall to compete for a two-way contract, but let him leave when the Brooklyn Nets guaranteed him a spot.
To let you behind the curtain, during Summer League, I began working on a story on Cui. I interviewed assistant GM Mike Schmitz about him, as well as several coaches who worked with him at Basketball Without Borders. But I was never able to get to him in Las Vegas because after every Blazers game and practice, he did his own extensive media session with a large group of Chinese reporters who made the trip entirely to cover him.
Cui had a good Summer League and I was under the impression he had a real shot at competing for a spot with the Blazers if they'd kept him. But he was, at the end of the day, a fringe training camp/two-way prospect, and this was still the amount of attention he was getting.
That's a far cry from Yang, the first Chinese player to be drafted in the first round since Yi Jianlian nearly two decades ago. Yang's rookie season will get a lot of attention no matter how it goes. And if he's half as good as the Blazers' front office and scouting department thinks he is, it could be miles beyond that.
(Side note: After Brooklyn signed Cui to a two-way, someone close to the team told me that their owner, Taiwanese billionaire Joseph Tsai, has long wanted the Nets to be a pipeline for Chinese basketball in the United States. That would certainly help explain why the Blazers weren't comfortable moving back beyond the 16th pick to land Yang, since the Nets held the 19th and 22nd picks in the draft.)
I'd even go as far as to say that there has never been as much worldwide attention on the Blazers as there's about to be now that Yang is here. I wouldn't be surprised if the team hires a full-time Chinese social-media content person. I would also expect, sometime in the next few years, that the Blazers will play a preseason game in China.
Since the Blazers made the shocking decision to draft Yang on Wednesday, some corners of NBA media have theorized that the pick may have had more to do with business than basketball. Remember, the Blazers are for sale, and an influx of interest from the NBA's biggest global fanbase could add another billion onto the price.
I don't believe that to be the motivation behind the pick, because I know how thorough and detail-oriented the Blazers' front office, particularly Schmitz, are when it comes to evaluating international prospects. But it's certainly not going to hurt the value of the franchise if Yang pans out.
As for the kid himself, I came away from Friday's press conference convinced Yang is going to become a fan favorite quickly. I saw his eyes light up when another reporter greeted him with a meticulously practiced and correctly pronounced "Ni hao." I watched his interpreter, Chris Liu, beam with pride as Yang attempted to answer part of a basketball question in English. Social media has already grabbed onto his first English answer, to a question about his interests outside of basketball. ("Sometimes I sleep. I like to play PS5. I like to eat.")
The Blazers' plan is to have a translator with Yang full-time. For my part, I downloaded Duolingo as soon as they made the pick and will be attempting to learn at least a few phrases in Mandarin before camp starts. His English will improve over time as he gets more comfortable in the United States, but I want to try to meet him where he is, at least a little bit.
The on-court part of Yang's fit with the Blazers is still a question mark, at least in the short term. Billups admitted that he doesn't envision Yang and Clingan sharing the floor in any kind of twin-towers lineup. As of now, Deandre Ayton and Robert Williams III are still on the roster. We'll see if that's still the case by the time training camp starts.
"We'd feel very comfortable putting him in a game right now," Billups said Friday. "He's that good. To me, this is not like a 'project' type of situation. This guy is ready to go. But he's in a crowded room. This will be an incredibly educational year for him, and I think when he does get a chance to play, everybody will be really impressed."
Yang will make his Blazers debut on July 11 in Las Vegas. His might be the most anticipated rookie debut at Summer League besides Cooper Flagg, not just because of where he's from but because the Blazers' decision to draft him as high as they did got more national attention than any 16th pick in memory.
Outside of Yao, China has never produced an NBA All-Star. The Blazers went out on a limb on draft night and made the bet that Yang will be the one to end that dry spell.
Whether he does or not, things are going to get interesting around here.
Comments ()