{"id":130174,"date":"2025-06-28T00:01:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T00:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/130174\/"},"modified":"2025-06-28T00:01:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T00:01:15","slug":"who-is-yang-hansen-what-to-know-about-nba-draft-first-round-pick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/130174\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Yang Hansen? What to know about NBA draft first round pick"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"play\"<\/p>\n

2025 NBA Draft prospects: First memories of falling in love with the NBA<\/p>\n

From watching hall of famers to playing video games, 2025 NBA draft prospects recall how they fell in love with the NBA with FTW’s Bryan Kalbrosky<\/p>\n

Yang Hansen may not have been a name on the radar for some, but his tall frame quickly caught the eye of many as he made his way toward the NBA draft<\/a> stage on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

Hansen, the 7-foot-2 Chinese center, heard his name called by NBA commissioner Adam Silver as the 16th overall pick by the Memphis Grizzlies<\/a>. He’ll soon be suiting up for the Portland Trail Blazers<\/a> thanks to a draft-night trade.<\/p>\n

Hansen was seemingly not a lock first-round pick but decided to show up with his family at the Barclays Center anyway and sat in the stands.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had him as a second-round pick, but it goes to show if you like a player, why wait?\u201d ESPN broadcast Jay Bilas said of Hansen after the first round broadcast was finished. \u201cThat was a little bit of a surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who is Yang Hansen?<\/p>\n

The 19-year-old big man has experience as a professional player, having spent the past two years with the Qingdao Eagles in the Chinese Basketball Association.<\/p>\n

He averaged a career-high 16.6 points last season to go along with his 10.5 rebounds, 3 assists and 2.6 blocks per game. He shot 58.6% from the field and 33.3% from the 3-point line.<\/p>\n

According to the NBA, Hansen is now the ninth player from China to be drafted, and the first since 2016.<\/p>\n

What was the Trail Blazers-Grizzlies trade?<\/p>\n

The Trail Blazers traded the No. 11 pick (Cedric Coward) to the Grizzlies for the No. 16 pick (Hansen), a first-round pick in 2028 and two second-round picks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2025 NBA Draft prospects: First memories of falling in love with the NBA From watching hall of famers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3784],"tags":[7,601,98,130,133,294,131,293,177,54,79,70,85,6,12,67,53,61,134,65,687,471,3967,132,66,83,55,64,63,82,688,1617],"class_list":{"0":"post-130174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-portland-trail-blazers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-blazers","10":"tag-draft","11":"tag-espn","12":"tag-espn-inc","13":"tag-grizzlies","14":"tag-inc","15":"tag-memphis","16":"tag-memphis-grizzlies","17":"tag-modular","18":"tag-modular-story","19":"tag-national","20":"tag-national-sports","21":"tag-nba","22":"tag-nba-draft","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-now","25":"tag-overall","26":"tag-overall-positive","27":"tag-point","28":"tag-portland","29":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","30":"tag-portlandtrailblazers","31":"tag-positive","32":"tag-sports","33":"tag-sports-news","34":"tag-story","35":"tag-the","36":"tag-to","37":"tag-to-the-point","38":"tag-trail","39":"tag-trail-blazers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114758057141715528","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}