Hansen Yang selected No. 16 overall by Grizzlies | 2025 NBA Draft Grades & Instant Reaction

Hansen Yang selected No. 16 overall by Grizzlies | 2025 NBA Draft Grades & Instant Reaction

all right well we have our pick in it is Young Hansen out of China 7 foot2 250 lbs heading to the Portland Trailblazers what do we need to know about this young man well you need to know that he’s 19 years old he averaged 16 points 10 rebounds and three assists per game along with three blocks in the Chinese CBA but this is higher than anyone projected i mean this is a swing of epic proportions and what’s slightly perplexing about this is it comes on the heels of drafting Donovan Klingan a year ago now listen I understand that Robert Williams and DeAndre Aan are not in the long-term plans for Portland but if you’re Donovan Klingan and you’re sitting at home right now you got to be thinking what just happened right yeah and this what just happened this is a surprise i don’t think you can find a mock draft that would have had uh this prospect in the top 20 most don’t even have him in the first round he’s 7 foot he’s 250 he’s huge and he’s more of a traditional post player um you know crafty around the rim all of that stuff but one of the problems with being this big is that his feet don’t move that well and there are real concerns around uh among NBA evaluators who just don’t know if you’re going to be able to keep him on the court because he does not move the way you want NBA players even front court players to move in this era of basketball and I don’t think this is a scenario where you can talk about those guys playing together you know neither one is especially mobile this is this is We’ve had some surprises tonight this is the biggest surprise bar none that we’ve had so far tonight are you ready to hand out a failing grade no no no um you don’t want to no mike Schmidz is knows more about this than I do uh I will say this i’m going to go I’ll go C just because stay consistent with the the philosophy of if it hits it’s going to be an A and they’re going to be smarter than anyone but if it doesn’t hit everybody’s going to look at this and say Caspers was on the board Liam McNeely was on the board Walter Clayton was on the board and Barry was on the board and you just took Cllingon last year uh Matt Norlander make sense of this for us uh this is uh quite a surprise here for the Portland Trailblazers what do you got okay a couple things here one I’m getting indications that uh player that Adam just mentioned uh Yan Baron is due to be selected next here that was the foreignb born player that was expected to be next in line uh not here and just hearing from a league source here like Portland we’ll see what what develops here um I know they had trouble bringing some players in in this range because fair or not this is just the opinion shared with me by some league sources and by on the agency side as well there’s a lot of questions about the direction Portland is in the state it is in right now i you know I know a few players in the representation were not overly eager to have their players drafted into Portland uh maybe these things are all tied and connected but yes if I tell you what if if Aore Demon going to Brooklyn was a 6.8 on on the shocking scale out of 10 this registers around a 9.5 overall uh there’s I can tell you just because I got a couple texts here on my phone and I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I’m the most absolutely connected uh NBA insider very very far from it but I’ve got a few connections and I can guarantee you that people around the league are shaking their heads and texting each other right now going “What on earth is Portland doing?” What on earth is Portland doing yeah I I I I’d have to echo that sentiment well the one thing I would add to that is that you know Mike understands what the reaction to this pick is going to be they understand folks right now they know more than we do let’s be clear yeah they understand what the reaction is do they though sometimes cuz sometimes I could reddraft i could re sometimes we could you and I all three of us could reddraft the draft and we would look smarter than some of these GMs nico Harrison just traded away Luca Donuch so it’s not out of the question that I know but my point is is sometimes GMs and front officers overthink these things and sometimes that’s why we as fans get so excited and so invested we go this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing because there are there there are these situations right here we go what is this guy doing to your point they are there have definitely been examples of people running NBA franchises who do not know what they’re doing my only point is that when you are Portland and you are going to do this you know exactly what everybody’s going to say the moment you do it that it’s stupid or um nonsensical or a big stretch that means you have to have real belief in what you’re doing to do it you got to really believe in what you’re doing to do this and I give them credit for that now we’ll see where it goes

Adam Finkelstein, Gary Parrish, and Avery Johnson join CBS Sports HQ to grade Hansen Yang being drafted by the Memphis Grizzlies at No. 16 overall.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL:
https://www.youtube.com/user/CBSSports

WATCH
CBS Sports HQ: https://www.cbssports.com/live/
Paramount Plus: https://www.paramountplus.com

FOLLOW US ON:
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/CBSSports/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/cbssports/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/CBSSports

#nba #nbadraft #grizzlies