Donovan Clingan has become a crucial part of the Portland Trail Blazers\u2019 new direction. After the trade for Ja Morant, the team now considers the young center essentially off limits in trade talks.<\/p>\n
Portland values Clingan\u2019s elite rim protection as a necessary piece behind a backcourt featuring Morant and Damian Lillard, two undersized guards who have not consistently excelled defensively.<\/p>\n
The Blazers are still expected to remain active on the market. They want more frontcourt depth and also have a crowded guard rotation with Morant, Lillard, Jrue Holiday and Scoot Henderson.<\/p>\n
Inside the organization, the decision to acquire Morant in exchange for Jerami Grant and Kris Murray was viewed as a no-brainer. Clingan\u2019s presence, however, is now seen as vital to Portland\u2019s long-term identity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Portland views the young center as a key piece next to its new-look backcourt with Morant and Damian Lillard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":448815,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[399],"tags":[],"rumors":[175],"typology":[183],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-503378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","rumors-nba-rumors","typology-rumors"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2025\/06\/Portland-Trail-Blazers.jpg","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503378"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=503378"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=503378"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=503378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}