Demystifying Yang Hansen: Is he China's next NBA player?

A few days ago, the Chinese U19 national youth team has finished their trip to the Hungarian World Youth Championship, and finally finished 10th out of all 16 teams.

In terms of expectations before the departure, such a ranking is not unexpected, especially considering that the national youth team has encountered France, Canada, Spain and other powerhouses in the group stage, and two European teams even met in the final, such a group situation determines that the journey of the Chinese team will be particularly difficult. Under such psychological construction, the performance of Guoqing is even a small surprise on the whole. But looking back at the course of the competition, there are many regrets, especially the two defeats against Canada and Slovenia, if this U19 national youth team can play perfectly, this tournament to break into the top eight or even create the best result in the history of the World Youth Championship, in fact, it is possible.

But the game has passed, the victory and defeat cannot be changed, fortunately, in addition to the record of the youth competition, another important significance is to examine young talents, in this point this year's national youth can be said to have gained a lot, such as defender Zhao Weilun in Europe, against Canada scored 25 points on 9-of-10 shooting; For example, Wang Junjie, who is about to go to the NCAA after graduating from the NBA academy, also scored 21 points and 8 rebounds in a single game against Spain.

But compared with these foreign players, the player with the biggest role and surprise is a potential stock cultivated by the CBA's local youth training: Yang Hansen, who will land in the CBA league next season, has conquered fans and many scouts across the country with his performance in this World Youth Championship, and faintly looks like the future Chinese men's basketball team's inner flag.

The talented player has been discovered by the Qingdao team for only 4 years: in a match in Shandong Province in 2019, Yang Hansen was suddenly noticed by many professional teams, and Xu Changsuo, who was the youth coach of the Qingdao team at the time, said that he moved Yang Hansen's family, which left him in Shandong Province. Subsequently, the Qingdao team has also been investing in him at any cost, the excellent internal special coach Zhang Bin guidance, Wu Qinglong who served as the manager in Qingdao, etc. have all dialed Yang Hansen, in the words of Qingdao U19 youth team coach Yang Genglin, "We are not one-on-one, we can't be 10-on-1 teaching." Then the Qingdao team hired three Serbian coaches just to train Yang Hansen alone, and the club's first team released Liu Chuanxing, Gao Shiao, Li Yuanyu and other inside players in the past two years, leaving a place for Yang Hansen to enter the team, and even the team's big foreign aid was replaced by Dakari Johnson to Dupu Reese, finding a very high-level sparring partner for Yang Hansen. All this is driving Yang Hansen to grow at super speed in three or four years.

But don't forget that Yang Hansen, born in June 2005, just celebrated his 18th birthday during the World Junior Championships and has not yet experienced too many high-level competitions. Therefore, this year's World Youth Championship, on the one hand, he gave himself a bar mitzvah with his brave performance, on the other hand, it also made a large number of fans begin to call: the CBA should consider canceling the age access system, and not let such young talents be shut out for a year, because people's expectations for Yang Hansen are not only limited to the CBA level, and even expect this talented teenager to become a new hope for Chinese players to impact the NBA.

So what is the embodiment of Yang Hansen's "genius", we may start from the first game of the World Youth Championship.

Chinese national youth first game against France, and Yang Hansen against the most opposite player Alexander Sal, is the younger brother of NBA player Olivier Sal, who has played for the Thunder and Blazers in the past two seasons, and is also regarded as the first round favorite of the 2024 NBA draft, ESPN draft expert Jonathan Givoni's 2024 mock draft list, Saar is in the top 20 - but in this game against Sal, Yang Hansen can be said to have completely suppressed the opponent at both ends of the offensive and defensive ends.

On the offensive end, as long as Yang Hansen holds the ball in the low position, with his height of 2.16 meters, solid low footsteps and soft touch, the suppressed Saar is basically helpless with him.

Yang Hansen even showed the ability to open the bow left and right in the low position shortly after the opening, and both hands can complete the finish freely, this time with the left hand hook, Sal is also helpless.

In this direct conversation in the second half, Yang Hansen opened Saar's defense with his left shoulder, almost proving that in a one-on-one situation, this talent is good, but against opponents who are not particularly fierce, they cannot limit themselves.

There were also these two rounds of one-on-one attacks, where Yang Hansen held the ball directly from a high position and used fairly smooth footsteps to penetrate Sal's defense. In this game, Yang Hansen scored 14 points with a super efficiency of 6-of-7, and played a hot rookie in the offensive end, but it is precisely because of this that all opponents of the subsequent Chinese national youth are more targeted to his defense.

From the second game against Canada, in addition to the inaccuracy caused by physical problems, Yang Hansen's defense has obviously changed, and the Canadian team's interior line Michael Nverco who plays for the NCAA University of Miami continues to put lateral confrontation on Yang Hansen, and under such collisions, Yang Hansen's efficiency has obviously declined.

There are more rounds, Yang Hansen encountered a collective block from the Canadian interior long crowd, like this ball in the third quarter has attracted three people to recover, which makes Yang Hansen even if he kills deep under the basket, there may still be finishing problems. In the future, he will inevitably need to strengthen his core strength and improve his upper body confrontation to overcome this difficulty.

Against Canada, Yang ended up with only 3-of-12 sports efficiency, partly because it was the second game in 20 hours, and his fitness was quite poor; There are also factors such as the height of Olivier Rieu, who is 2.31 meters tall, against the Canadian team No. 0. But throughout the game, Yang Hansen still exposed the instability of the young players' offensive end.

Of course, Yang Hansen's offensive weapon is not only personal scoring, in the debut of this World Youth Championship, the FIBA official commentary soon introduced Yang Hansen as "China's Jokic", the meaning is self-evident, Yang Hansen as an 18-year-old player, his passing imagination and technique completely surpassed his peers. Against France, when his fitness declined, Yang Hansen decisively came to the high position and began to deal cards, using various ways to find teammates, such as connecting with Wang Haoran, who is 2.05 meters tall, which is the usual high-low cooperation of the national youth.

In the area of the free throw line, Yang Hansen can do more articles, he is very good at observing the running position of his teammates, as long as his teammates can use cover, reverse running and other ways to run a certain position, he will give signals from a height like a beacon and feed the ball to the right position.

In this round against Spain, he held the ball at the three-point line, using a hand-to-hand duo to repeatedly find teammate Zhang Junhao's possible timing to catch the ball, and finally he threw a straight shot with his big hand to help Zhang Junhao stand at the free throw line. Most of the legendary centers in the history of the Chinese men's basketball team have tried, and Battle is quite good at giving the ball at the top of the arc later in his career, but with such awareness at such a young age, Yang Hansen is obviously a genius in this skill point.

With his passing skills and vision, the way to assist will never be limited to dealing cards in the high position, and after attracting opponents in the low post to a certain recovery, he often interacts with the empty cuts of strikers such as Wang Junjie and Wang Haoran. In this tournament, Yang Hansen eventually handed out 4.7 assists per game, ranking fourth among all players, and undoubtedly the top among interior players.

However, Yang Hansen paid a lot of the price of mistakes while assisting, and in such a high-low round, the passing intention was too obvious, but he missed the opposite advantage.

He also had 3.9 turnovers per game, some of which resulted from rounds where the ball was squeezed out of the attack, and many of which resulted from the backlash of failed forced passes.

Pictured above is the opening game against strong rivals Spain, where Yang broke off after a blockade and made his only three-point shot of the tournament, but similar rounds are rare for him, and he is far from incorporating long-range shots into his arsenal. Including only 60.7% of the free throw shooting rate in the entire tournament, it is inevitable that Yang Hansen will hesitate to shoot himself, but once the shooting threat is not enough, the choice after stopping the ball at a high position is easy to be recognized by the opponent, which is Yang Hansen's shortcomings that still need to be improved on the offensive end.

Compared with the instability on the offensive end, Yang Hansen may be a more terrifying existence on the defensive end, especially in the matter of guarding the frame, his consciousness and judgment are amazing, and he is definitely among the top of his peers in the world. The first statistic of the Chinese national youth team in this tournament came from the first defensive round against France, where Yang Hansen's defense was quickly in place and fanned the opponent's layup directly out of the bottom line.

Yang Hansen has a natural sense of when it comes to blocking timing, and when two teammates like this grab a missed round, he can even immediately turn around and find the opponent's shot point, and immediately reward Sal with a big hot pot.

In the game against Canada, he also had many wonderful frame performances, several of which he directly turned away opponents' dunks, whether it was one-on-one single defense, or teammates after losing position, he always found the best blocking point at one time. If in terms of physical condition, Yang Hansen is slightly inferior to Zhou Qi of the same age, but he has almost achieved a frame protection effect similar to Zhou Qi with unparalleled judgment.

Another major feature of Yang Hansen's cap is that he can concentrate on observation at certain times, so as to achieve "full fire" on the cap, that is, continuously enjoy the hot pot in a short period of time. For example, against strong rivals Spain, he blocked consecutive blocks in the first quarter, putting China on par with the eventual champion team for a long time.

What is especially terrifying is that most of Yang's blocks come from under the basket, but when facing Spain, he even has a block outside the three-point line, showing an incredible defensive area.

In qualifying against host Hungary, Yang played the same scene again, this time reading accurately when his opponent had little shooting time left, directly hitting the three-point line, and even getting the ball to launch a fast attack, causing a physical foul by his opponent.

In 7 games, Yang Hansen sent a total of 35 blocks, averaging 5.0 blocks per game to dominate the World Youth Championship blocking list, and his personal blocks are equivalent to the sum of the second and third players on the block list. Calling Yang Hansen the first frame demon king of this year's U19 World Youth Championship can be described as worthy of the name, the above video is how Yang Hansen completed two blocks in 5 seconds and three times in 15 seconds when the Chinese team faced the Canadian team, which is definitely his personal blocking highlight clip.

Yang Hansen's defense is not only reflected in the blocking statistics, in addition to 35 blocks, he also affects a large number of opponents' shots, so that a number of strong opponents can be described as countless failed rounds to attack the basket. In the relatively unstable U19 game, many teams with excellent physical talent relied more on impacting the basket, and Yang Hansen grasped the mentality of his opponent and played his ultimate frame performance. According to the statistics of the official data cooperation agency of the Chinese Basketball Association, the success rate of his frame shield in this competition reached 80%. His rebounding protection is also crucial, averaging 10.4 rebounds per game, ranking third on the tournament rebounding list.

In addition, like Riw, who is 2.31 meters against Canada, Yang Hansen also made stubborn resistance in the low post, such a round will not be included in the statistics, but it shows his value. This year's World Youth Championship Yang Hansen is not only the first pillar of the Chinese team, but also because of his dazzling performance has been put on the watch list by many scouts, such as the famous scout Robb Karaznevich from Lithuania praised after the match between China and Spain, "Yang Hansen is one of my favorite players in this tournament, he is not left behind in the dialogue with Europe's top newcomer Izan Almansa, the only thing to pay attention to is Yang Hansen's mistake." ”

As Si Yan, in this World Youth Championships, whether it is facing France's Alexander Sal, or Almansa, who won the MVP of this tournament in the Spanish team, and even Trey Johnson, the first high school student of ESPN in 2023 of the United States, Yang Hansen has played well one-on-one, such as Yang Hansen's outstanding personal attack against Almansa. For this reason, the famous basketball youth training website NextGen Hoops also selected Yang Hansen as the best team of this year's World Youth Championship.

So, can we conclude that there is a certain possibility that Yang Hansen can be called in the 2024 NBA Draft?

From the perspective of talent, we should indeed establish some confidence in Yang Hansen, Chinese players can enter the NBA before, after all, they are still based on height as an advantage, Yang Hansen's hardware is beyond doubt.

But because of his height, he is bound to encounter unprecedented challenges in the NBA in today's era, such as Yang Hansen's frame advantage, can he still withstand the test in the face of NBA-level guard blocking ability? Strengths that you originally have can become weaknesses at any time.

On the other hand, there is a new situation in the NBA that is not conducive to young overseas players: new collective bargaining agreements have been implemented, so that second-round rookies can be signed by special cases for three to four years, which may greatly change the principles of the second-round draft of NBA teams.

In previous years' NBA drafts, many teams would select some overseas potential stocks in the second round for stocking, take the signing rights into their own hands, and if the player performed well after being drafted, it was possible to be called, as Jokic did not immediately report to the NBA after being selected in 2014.

But now that the new policy is implemented, NBA teams can lock in players with a cheap contract for a longer period of time, which means that NCAA players who signed as undrafted players in the past will now become the target of robbery by various teams, and in the 2023 NBA Draft just past, European clubs may be stocked with no more than 3 second-round picks, compared with 9 players a year ago.

Therefore, whether it is the basketball style of the current era or the newly introduced policies of the NBA, it has further increased the difficulty of Yang Hansen's selection. But no matter what, we will stand behind Yang Hansen unconditionally, hoping that he can complete the inheritance that spans many years and break the embarrassment of not playing Chinese players in the NBA for many years.

What's more, no matter what, he is already destined to assume the future of the Chinese men's basketball team.