After two really dominant runs all through faculty basketball, UConn star Donovan Clingan is headed to Portland.
The Path Blazers chosen Clingan with the No. 7 general choose within the NBA Draft on Wednesday night time. The 7-foot-2 middle is contemporary off back-to-back title runs with the Huskies, the primary workforce to tug off the feat in 17 years.
Although each Zaccharie Risacher and Alex Sarr held a transparent benefit within the race for the No. 1 general choose, Clingan was gaining steam in latest days. After Sarr declined to fulfill with the Hawks, the workforce narrowed in on Risacher — whom they finally took No. 1 general — and Clingan.
Although he slipped a bit from the highest, Clingan is among the safer prospects accessible on this in any other case weak draft class for a workforce in search of assist inside. The 20-year-old averaged 13 factors and seven.4 rebounds whereas serving to UConn to its nationwide championship earlier this spring, which got here a yr after he was a key bench participant on the 2023 championship workforce. He appeared considerably higher bodily close to the top of his second season with the Huskies, and he did an honest job defending and outlasting Purdue star and two-time participant of the yr Zach Edey within the title sport.
Clingan has already confirmed himself able to being a defensive cornerstone. With a close to 7-foot-7 wingspan, he generally is a rim protector and a uncommon true middle within the league. However his offensive sport has solely improved in his two faculty seasons. He’s been a dominant pick-and-roll and inside risk already whereas being extremely environment friendly across the rim. He shot almost 64% from the sector final season.
Clingan ought to have the ability to leap proper in and anchor the Path Blazers’ protection. However there’s loads of room for progress for the 20-year-old, whom Dan Hurley didn’t hesitate to match to a youthful Nikola Jokić.
“What we talked to him about was don’t get caught up in mastering the sport inside and outside,” Hurley stated, by way of ESPN. “We’d present him Nikola Jokić from an offensive standpoint when he was youthful. In order that Donovan would perceive that when Jokić was 19, that wasn’t what he was doing proper now. You’re watching what he’s doing proper now and pondering I must be doing that proper now. Properly, that’s not what he was doing [at that age].
“If he was, nicely f***, he wouldn’t have been drafted within the second spherical.”