Trail Blazers Fined for Pre-Draft Contact With Yang Hansen, Two Executives Suspended

On Wednesday, the NBA announced that two of Trail Blazers general manager Joe Cronin's top assistants, Mike Schmitz and Sergi Oliva, have been suspended for two weeks without pay and the organization has been fined $100,000 for "violating league rules governing contact with draft-ineligible players" two years before they drafted Yang Hansen in the No. 16 overall pick last June.

"When this was brought to our attention, the Portland Trail Blazers self-reported to the NBA," the team said in a statement. "The team cooperated fully with the investigation and accept the league's determination."

The Blazers stunned entire NBA by picking Yang in the first round of the 2025 draft. The 7-foot-1 Chinese center was widely projected as a second-rounder, but the Blazers had been enamored with him since 2023, when one of their international scouts first saw him at the FIBA U-19 World Cup in Hungary.

According to the league's announcement, the punishment stems from a trip Schmitz and Oliva took in December of 2023 to scout Yang in person with his Chinese Basketball Association team, the Qingdao Eagles.

That trip, which Schmitz detailed to me the week of the draft, took months for the Blazers to clear due to the Chinese government's strict rules about foreign companies doing business in the country. The two executives spent eight days in China, and continued to follow Yang's progress closely during the 2023-24 and 2024-25 CBA seasons, as well as holding a private workout and scrimmage between the Blazers and a Chinese All-Star team Yang was a part of during Summer League in 2024.