Yang Hansen made headlines the moment the Portland Trail Blazers selected him in the first round of the 2025 NBA Draft. The world waited to see if the prodigy from China would make a splash in the American league. So far, he hasn’t. The 7’1 center has appeared in 25 games, averaging just 8.4 minutes per.
It’s not surprising, then, that when Danny Chau of The Ringer assembled a list of 15 rookies to watch at the midway point of the season, Yang’s name wasn’t among them.
But you know who did make that list? Equally surprising Trail Blazers rookie Caleb Love. 11.1 points over 36 games was enough to get Love onto the national radar alongside players like VJ Edgecome, Cedric Coward, and Derik Queen.
Of Love, Chau writes:
It’s hard to make sense of who Love really is. He is a two-way player for the Portland Trail Blazers, an undrafted 24-year-old free agent who wasn’t even invited to the 2025 draft combine. He had a career 38 percent field goal percentage over the course of five college seasons at North Carolina and Arizona. He shot 35 percent in five NBA summer league games. He shot 33 percent from the field in his first 21 regular-season games. Simply put, there is a large sample of Love being an eager but woefully inefficient shooter.
But then what are we to make of the 14-game stretch in which Love looked like Damian Lillard reincarnate, stepping up for a Blazers squad decimated by backcourt injuries? For about a month from late December to mid-January, Love went on one of the most impressive and improbable hot streaks of any player this season, averaging 16.8 points per game almost exclusively off the bench and shooting 45.5 percent from the field and 40.7 percent from 3 (on 8.4 attempts!).
Assuming Love averages out somewhere between the two poles of this season’s performance, he’ll still be a useful rotation player. He is a dead ringer basketball-wise for Eric Gordon: They’re almost identical in their burly builds, right down to the massive wingspan relative to their 6-foot-3 frames. Gordon was far more explosive at his athletic peak, but Love has the more natural comportment as a shooter, both off movement and off the dribble. The bulk of Gordon’s 19-year career has been built on his reliability as a high-volume shooter who can serve as a secondary or tertiary creator in a pinch while holding his ground on defense. Love has already shattered expectations for his NBA career; even if this blistering run peters out, he has a perfect blueprint for longevity.
What do you think? Is Love the brightest prospect among Portland’s new players or does Yang still reign? Or Sidy Cissoko? Share your thoughts about Love and company in the comments below. And please help us send kids in need to see the Blazers play in March. Here’s the website the Blazers themselves have set up to donate tickets!
