Yang Hansen's Trail Blazers Draft Workout, as Told by the Players He Faced: 'He Really Surprised Me'

📍LAS VEGAS — On May 29, the Trail Blazers held their first major predraft workout after the lottery landed them with the No. 11 overall pick. The group featured five well-known college players projected to be picked in the late lottery or the middle of the first round, plus a mostly unknown 7-foot-1 center from China who was widely viewed as a second-round prospect.

Four weeks later, Portland shocked the entire NBA by drafting Yang Hansen ahead of any of them.

From the outside, Yang's inclusion in that workout group scanned as unusual. He had impressed NBA team personnel earlier that month at the predraft combine in Chicago, the first time most scouts saw him in person. But he was still not widely viewed as a prospect who would go as high as Portland was picking.

The rationale for Yang being invited to this workout session seemed to be simply that the Blazers needed six bodies for the three-on-three scrimmaging and drills that usually make up these predraft workouts.

In reality, general manager Joe Cronin and his staff wanted Yang all along, and put this group together intentionally to see how he'd hold up against some of the more heralded prospects they'd face criticism for drafting him ahead of.

Two of the other prospects were already familiar with Yang. Georgia big man Asa Newell, who was picked 23rd overall by the Atlanta Hawks, had played against him at the FIBA Under-19 World Cup in 2023, which happened to be the first time the Blazers organization saw Yang.

Newell doesn't remember many particulars about facing Yang in that tournament, where the U.S. team beat China 92-69 in the first game of the knockout rounds.

Except one play.

"I remember I dunked on him," Newell joked after a Hawks Summer League game last week.

Former St. Joseph's forward Rasheer Fleming also knew more of Yang than most people going into that late-May workout. He and Yang are both Klutch clients, so they were in the loop on each other's plans throughout the predraft process. But the workout in Portland was the first time he got to see him firsthand.

"They've been saying he's the next Jokić," Fleming said in Las Vegas last week after a Summer League game with the Phoenix Suns, who drafted him 31st overall last month. "He's so skilled. We got to see all of that in the workout. He was on my team. He threw me some dimes. He can really pass."

For the rest of the participants—Michigan State's Jase Richardson, UConn's Liam McNeeley and Illinois' Will Riley—the workout in Portland was their first exposure to Yang.

"That was the first time I'd ever seen him play, so I didn't know what he brought to the table," Richardson said after a Summer League game with the Orlando Magic. "He really surprised me. He was one of the players that surprised me the most during the entire draft process. The way he thinks the game and makes plays at a high level for his size. He moves well, blocks shots and rebounds. He really stuck out to me. He's gifted."

The workout the Blazers held with Yang was early in the process for everybody. When this part of draft season begins, players are not only trying to showcase their own skills to NBA front offices and coaching staffs, but gauging their competition and looking for feedback from teams about where they stack up against the rest of the class. Most of the players Yang worked out against were projected in the range of where the Blazers were picking. In the minds of that competition, he held his own against a tough group.

"I think that workout went extremely well for me," Newell said. "That was one of the first workouts I did. We had a bunch of first-round guys in there, it was extremely competitive. I think I did well. But seeing [Yang's] reads in the pick-and-roll and the way he read the game, I definitely thought he was someone who could shoot up in draft stock."

One thing none of them were used to was practicing and scrimmaging with a player who doesn't speak their language. Yang's longtime interpreter, Chris Liu, was with him throughout his predraft process, creating another layer of communication everybody had to navigate. Liu helped relay coaching instructions to Yang during the on-court drills, and conveyed Yang's thoughts from Mandarin to English for the Blazers' coaches and executives during the post-workout film session.

"It was definitely different," Richardson said. "His translator was all over the court. [Yang] doesn't really speak a lot of English, so we had to get to his translator with the drills and stuff. But he's getting there with the English. In the locker room, he said a couple of things to us. It was a unique experience."

In his first three Summer League games, Yang has been vocal on the court, directing teammates despite the language barrier. That was evident in his predraft workout in Portland, too.

"Once he stepped on the court, he doesn't need a translator," Fleming said. "He was talking on the court. I don't know if he was speaking English, but you could understand what he was saying and what he was trying to communicate."

On draft night, the Blazers traded back with Memphis from No. 11 to No. 16, picking up a future first-round pick and two second-rounders. When they took Yang, it stunned the league. But it was the culmination of two years of scouting work by Cronin's staff on a prospect in the Chinese Basketball Association, a league that is notoriously tough to evaluate.

After seeing Yang for the first time at that FIBA tournament in 2023, the Blazers scouted him in person in China with the Qingdao Eagles, saw him at Summer League last year in a private joint scrimmage with a Chinese all-star team and got another up-close look at him this spring at the combine in Chicago. They viewed each of those as a benchmark to measure his progress against progressively stiffer competition.

That May workout in Portland was the final thing that sold them.

It sold the other players in the workout, too.

"He's extremely talented," Newell says. "Very good footwork for his size, and his IQ is through the roof."