Trail Blazers Introduce Donovan Clingan: 'Defense wins ballgames, offense sells tickets'

📍 TUALATIN, Ore. — On Saturday, the Trail Blazers introduced No. 7 overall pick Donovan Clingan in a press conference at their practice facility.

The theme of the day was defense. The line of the day came from Clingan’s late mother, when the 20-year-old relayed something she drilled into him growing up:

“‘Defense wins ballgames, offense sells tickets,’” he said she told him. “You've got to play defense to win games and I want to win games. I'll take a block off the backboard over a dunk any day of the week.”

2024 NBA Draft, Round 1: Trail Blazers Add Two Good Basketball Players

📍 TUALATIN, Ore. — The Trail Blazers entered the first round of what is now a two-night NBA Draft with two lottery picks. They came out of it with two good basketball players, one in the draft and one in a trade they agreed to an hour before the festivities started.

The Rose Garden ReportSean Highkin

This press conference was a lighter affair than Scoot Henderson’s introduction a year ago. The question of Damian Lillard’s future is no longer hanging over the organization. The entire focus can be, and was, on the organization’s excitement about Clingan, and how they hope he’ll transform a defense that has been one of the worst in the NBA for years now.

As excited as Clingan is to be in the NBA, as excited as his family was to see him achieve his dream (his father, grandmother, sister and girlfriend were all in attendance), as excited as general manager Joe Cronin is that the player he coveted the most in the draft fell to him at the seventh pick, it was clear that one person is happier than anyone else about the way the draft shook out: Chauncey Billups.

“Our rim defense was a problem last year,” Billups said. “We struggled there. So I love what we did. We went out and got the best in the draft at protecting the rim. I think most teams will reconsider attacking our paint, so that changes things. I'm really excited about it.”

The question that came up on draft night, of how minutes will shake out between Clingan and incumbent starting center Deandre Ayton, came up on Saturday. Clingan said he was looking forward to learning from Ayton. Cronin said he’d spoken to Ayton since the draft and that Ayton was “incredibly excited” about the pick. Billups said he was even willing to experiment with playing the two together, something he tried to do at the beginning of last season with Ayton and Robert Williams III before Williams’ season-ending knee injury.

“We've spent a lot of time talking to you guys about how smaller we are than most teams and giving up that disadvantage most nights,” Billups said. “I know, me as a player, I felt so good being aggressive guarding the basketball when I knew that if I made a mistake, that big fella was going to be back there helping. That Ben Wallace, Kenyon Martin, Rasheed Wallace … I can be really aggressive knowing I've got that guy to help me and clean up my mistakes. That's a lot of what you're going to see from us.”

They discussed Clingan’s offensive role as well. Billups, as the story goes, was shocked when the Blazers brought him in for a predraft workout and he showed signs of being a knockdown three-point shooter that were never on display at UConn. Billups asked Clingan during the interview portion of the visit why he never took threes in college, since he clearly was capable of hitting them. Clingan responded that he was simply playing within Huskies head coach Dan Hurley’s system and doing what it takes to win. Billups called it “one of the best answers that a kid gave me.”

“The only thing that means anything to me is winning,” Clingan said. “It's not about the points or the rebounds. It's about if my team won and your team lost.”

Clingan’s teams have won a lot more than they’ve lost—back-to-back national championships at UConn, and back-to-back state championships his junior and senior years of high school in Bristol before that. That’s going to change in Portland, with the Blazers still deep in a rebuild. But the organization feels strongly that when they’re ready to win again, Clingan will be an important part of it.

“I'm confident that he's ready to take on anything I give him right now,” Billups said. “There are some things about his game that are really underrated that will translate to the NBA. I think his passing is really underrated. The positions that Coach Hurley put him in gives me so much confidence that he's ready for those things.”