Game Thread 2025 PRESEASON GAME #2 - BLAZERS VS KINGS - FRIDAY - OCT 10, 2025 - 7:00 PM PST, BLAZERVISION

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Haven’t see. Either game. Just high lites. My biggest concern for Yang is conditioning and speed of play. Foot speed would be a bonus. He seems to have really worked his ass off on speed of play since being drafted. Without watching entire games I can’t get a feel for conditioning. Anyone have thoughts on this? Was he sucking air? Hitting all four free throws is not just a function of repetition. It also bodes well for conditioning. The kid will explode when the conditioning is there to play more than half a game. Then he has to learn to control his fouls and be able to stay on the floor. That works in conjunction of the defensive makeup of the team. Playing with Jrue/Tou, elite defenders reduces the number of blow bys that Yang would have to cover. If he can just cover his man the others can help him stay on the floor. He will have ugly shifts, ugly games. Life of a rookie, but he should get at least 16 minutes a game early.
 
Yang - much more skilled on offense
DC - better at defense

NEITHER of them seems very good defensively in space or out on the perimeter and both pick up a lot of dumb, ticky-tacky (rookie type) fouls. Both need work on their conditioning as is to be expected with players that young and of that size.

....but there are certainly some signs that both of them can contribute in certain ways on the court. Between conditioning and foul trouble, I can see Duop-Reath getting minutes on a fairly regular basis.
 
BIG Q said:
Haven’t see. Either game. Just high lites. My biggest concern for Yang is conditioning and speed of play. Foot speed would be a bonus. He seems to have really worked his ass off on speed of play since being drafted. Without watching entire games I can’t get a feel for conditioning. Anyone have thoughts on this? Was he sucking air? Hitting all four free throws is not just a function of repetition. It also bodes well for conditioning. The kid will explode when the conditioning is there to play more than half a game. Then he has to learn to control his fouls and be able to stay on the floor. That works in conjunction of the defensive makeup of the team. Playing with Jrue/Tou, elite defenders reduces the number of blow bys that Yang would have to cover. If he can just cover his man the others can help him stay on the floor. He will have ugly shifts, ugly games. Life of a rookie, but he should get at least 16 minutes a game early.
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At no point did it look like he was huffin and puffin. Looked great out there in his limited minutes.
 
THE HCP said:
At no point did it look like he was huffin and puffin. Looked great out there in his limited minutes.
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Great to hear. He has come a long way from summer league. He was understandably huffing and puffing there. Kid seems to really be working hard on the conditioning. Get that down, makes the other stuff easier to work on. He obviously has talent on the offensive end and a high BBIQ. Defense will come with experience. Great find by the Blazers and extremely guttsy pick considering none of us had heard of him. Sounds as if only a hand full of teams were up on him and the Blazers were at the perfect spot.
 
BIG Q said:
Great to hear. He has come a long way from summer league. He was understandably huffing and puffing there. Kid seems to really be working hard on the conditioning. Get that down, makes the other stuff easier to work on. He obviously has talent on the offensive end and a high BBIQ. Defense will come with experience. Great find by the Blazers and extremely guttsy pick considering none of us had heard of him. Sounds as if only a hand full of teams were up on him and the Blazers were at the perfect spot.
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Yeah conditioning looked way better Friday than in summer league. Summer league he was also traveling a lot and probably was out of normal training routines from extensive draft prep. He had a lot of distractions in vegas too as well as ESPN interviews and massive Chinese media documenting him. I was shocked he played nearly a whole quarter straight in the second half on Friday and seemed totally fine with his conditioning.

Between Clingan starting and us going for periods with a small ball center I don't think conditioning will be an issue at all this season. We really just need Yang for 20 minutes a game. Maybe a few games he gets closer to 30.

His scoring was super impressive on Friday.

Defensively he's going to have some issues all year. Most our roster is very good defenders though so it might be more that we just try to avoid pairing him too much with our worst defender (Grant or Sharpe?) and it should be fine. As the year goes on we may be able to initiate the 2nd unit offense through Yang, he can get his own shot or setup for someone else. Especially when we only have one of Jrue/Scoot at PG.
 
THE HCP said:
Will be fun to see these young bucks go up against Nurk this week.
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Good point. I see now we also play the Jazz a week into the season.

Is Nurk a backup or possibly 3rd string on the Jazz?

I think playing against Ayton will also be interesting. Although wouldn't shock me if he decides to take off one night from video games, not sleep on an air mattress, and actually play decently against us in a revenge game. Regardless of how that plays out Clingan/Yang are so much more enjoyable to root for than Ayton, or even a lesser degree Nurk.

I was more of a Nurk supporter than most here but really was zero need for him on the roster once we traded CJ and flipped to tanking. I did hate the Nurk contract as well as Ant's deal. But you put Nurk on a reasonable MLE deal or such and he would've been fine here.
 
The centers on both LA teams are going to completely destroy our guys!
 
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