Donovan Clingan spent much of his rookie year hearing doubts about whether his game would hold up at the NBA level. By the end of his second season, the Portland Trail Blazers center had answered with production that put him among the league’s best rebounders and rim protectors.
With four games left in the Trail Blazers’ season, Clingan led the league in offensive rebounds at 4.5 per game, ranked third in total rebounds at 11.6 and was fifth in blocks at 1.7. The 22-year-old, taken by Portland with the seventh pick in the 2024 NBA Draft, had also played 73 games and was averaging 27.2 minutes, 12.0 points, 11.6 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 1.7 blocks while shooting 52.0% from the field and 32.7% from three.
That matters because Clingan was never coming into the league as a finished scorer. At 7-foot-2 with a 7-foot-7 wingspan, he was drafted to do the dirty work, and he has done that at a high level. He is now being described as an above-average starting center, an elite rim protector and a player who can pass out of traffic and operate in the pick and roll. The three-point shot that once looked like a projection has become a real part of his profile.
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The backdrop is a 2024 draft class that has been called one of the more modest in recent memory, with Stephon Castle having been chosen as Rookie of the Year from that group. Clingan’s first season raised questions about whether he could become more than a specialist, especially on a team that needed real minutes from him. His sophomore season has pushed back on that idea and given Portland a clearer answer about what it has in him.
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The remaining concern is narrower now, but it is still real. Clingan’s biggest weakness remains against centers who can pull him away from the basket, the kind of matchup Brook Lopez can create. That limitation matters because it frames the next stage of his development: not whether he belongs, but how far he can go against the league’s most mobile big men. Victor Wembanyama would block him from any realistic Defensive Player of the Year path, but Clingan has already made himself far more than a developmental project.
