2024 NBA Draft scouting report: Donovan Clingan

Could the Hawks add the two-time collegiate champion?

After coming off the bench for the champion UConn Huskies in the 2022-23 championship season, Donovan Clingan moved into a starting role for the past season. By the end of the season, he was very clearly the best player on the best team in college basketball.

Rated a 4-star recruit per 247 Sports out of Bristol, Conn., the hometown kid became a local legend in staying home and bringing trophies back to Storrs in back-to-back years. In his sophomore season, Clingan averaged 13.0 points, 7.4 rebounds, 1.5 assists, and 2.5 blocks in 22.5 minutes per game.

Clingan, who turned 20 this February, is a throwback to large 7-foot centers of yore who dominated the game with size and brawn over skill and mobility. But at this juncture in the draft cycle, Clingan’s agility and offensive upside may actually be understated.

So, with the draft rapidly approaching, let’s take a deep dive into his game.

Offense

Rim running

If you’re 7-foot-2 (without shoes) and play with Trae Young, you better be able to run to the rim both in transition and in the halfcourt. Clingan has solid hands and a wide catch radius for hauling in lob passes and post entry passes alike. Additionally, there are no real worries about his finishing at the rim — he flushes dunks regularly through contact without problem.

Clingan finished 70% of his shots at the rim within the 3-foot restricted area, including 48-of-52 or 92% of dunk attempts in 2023-24. Often, he simply towered over lesser college teams that just couldn’t match up with his size. But even against the Zach Edeys of the world, like in the last men’s basketball NCAA championship game, he still produced.

UConn didn’t run a ton of pick-and-roll in the conventional sense, rather they flowed into it during the operation of their motion offense. But Clingan’s has the wherewithal to make timely rolls to the basket, something that would translate well to playing with either Trae Young or Dejounte Murray or even both.

He is by no means an elite athlete or a guy that will spend a ton of time above the rim, but he has this basic rim running play in his arsenal. And having constant rim pressure will help open up the rest of the offense, similar to how Clint Capela has operated for four years in Atlanta and many more in Houston.

Dribble-handoff offense

If the Hawks continue to funnel their offense through Trae Young, then the offense will remain pick-and-roll-heavy. There’s no need to change that when you have one of the most gifted pick-and-roll maestros in the game today. But Clingan’s advanced mastery of the dribble-handoff (DHO) action could help diversify Atlanta’s offense.

Head coach Quin Snyder subtly implemented DHO sets into the offense a year ago, but this is just not something with which incumbent starting center Clint Capela was apt to do. But UConn has been running a DHO-heavy offense with a lot of off ball screening and moving under Hurley. Certainly, the high team talent and brilliant coaching made for some pre-designed passes, but Clingan’s ability to improvise is still rather impressive.

He stepped up to the task of making reads from these actions, and more often than not he made the right decision. You often found him hitting back cutters and slip screeners for easy layups, both within the script of the offense and off script.

In the below clip, you can picture a set that the Hawks could easily install. When Clingan gives up the ball on a handoff action, he screens and rolls. If that’s Trae Young, for example, turning the corner, he would have the option to get to the rim or lob to the rolling Clingan should the extra defender continue trailing.

Passing/playmaking

You can’t tell the tale of the upside of Donovan Clingan without a focus on his passing — something very advanced for his age and position. He recorded 4.1 assists per 100 possessions against only 2.2 turnovers despite operating a larger share of the offense than most centers do in college.

And while he can’t stretch the floor with his shooting (more on that later), his passing, especially from the top of the key and post areas, make him a threat that forces defenders to crowd him — even out to the three-point line.

Clingan reads the floor well, and when he feels the double team (or even triple team) come, he’s able to hit a cutter for a bucket in the below snippet.

This dime to a baseline cutting Stephon Castle was also pretty sweet.

Offensive rebounding

It’s no surprise Clingan is an upper echelon rebounder, especially on the offensive end. But it’s his relentlessness that pushes him into the ranks of the elite. He logged a gaudy 13.8% offensive rebound rate last season and a 16.2% offensive rebound rate in his two combined seasons at UConn.

Screening

The art of screen setting has become an overlooked aspect of player evaluation. We can chuckle when a big man like Rudy Gobert gloats in his screen assists, but there is very tangible value to creating space for ball handlers to break down a defense.

Clingan is an excellent ball screener, always willing to give up his body for some extra space for Tristen Newton, Stephon Castle, or whomever. Even quick off ball pin down screens, like below to open up the three for Alex Karaban, adds up for an offense.

Shooting

I don’t buy Clingan as a future floor stretcher — certainly not based upon videos of him hitting three-pointers in an open gym. His career college free throw shooting percentage of 56% doesn’t inspire too much confidence, along with the fact that he shot just 27-for-59 on medium range and out two-point shots (outside of the restricted area).

But his shot motion looks clean enough to suggest it could get there at a future date. It’s possible he can shoot from deep if given tons of time and space for his windup.

Clingan only hit two threes in his college career, and both were in almost identical situations: with a sea of space at the top of the key and his team up a sizeable margin over their opponent.

But this just isn’t a bankable skill for him, and the Hawks will need to put shooting around him at the other four positions to begin his career should they select him.

Defense

Rim protection

Donovan Clingan measured 7-foot-3 in height in shoes at the 2024 NBA Combine, to go along with a 7-foot-7 wingspan and a 9-foot-7 standing reach. The wingspan and standing reach marks places him in the top-20 for each among players measured at a combine. So, he has some obvious physical gifts that give him a leg up on protecting the paint.

Clingan makes up for the fact that he’s not an elite change of direction big with anticipation and smarts to go along with a big paw that tracks every ball in sight. He finished sixth in Division-I NCAA men’s basketball for block percentage with 11.4% in 2023-24. In plain English, for more than one out of every 10 two-point shots attempted by the opponent, Clingan recorded a block — in addition to affecting the trajectory of many more.

How about the range and awareness on this one? It’s a really impressive recovery from behind.

Here’s another one, where Clingan takes the body contact from a driving guard and still manages to swipe down and erase the shot.

Rim protection is more than blocks, of course. Just deterring your opponent from the rim and forcing a heavy diet of jump shots is a huge win for the defense, and Clingan’s presence down low often accomplishes just this. Look no further than the dominance he displayed against the Illinois Illini this past March Madness.

Defensive rebounding and communication

Donovan Clingan posted a 24% defensive rebound rate in 2023-24 and a 26% defensive rebound rate overall (both solid but not spectacular marks), and he looks to be a willing and technical box out artist on tape. For the most part, you can let the 7-foot-2 frame do most of the work, but it does take a bit of bend and lateral movement to ensure you seal off opposing bigs. Still, his defensive rebounding isn’t quite as productive as his offensive rebounding, and he can find himself occasionally out of place when shots go up.

By all accounts, Clingan had become a leader in the locker room after stepping into a starting role. And as the anchor of the defense, the center has to be the most vocal on the court in calling out coverages and assignments throughout the game.

Hedging and recovering

Clingan will never be seen as a switchable big, even in an era when bigs switching up to wings and guards is more and more. It’s best to let him drop against screen actions and roam a confined area near the basket.

But it may be important to try to get the ball out of the best players’ hands when possible — or at least impede their ability to get downhill. But at the moment, Clingan is awkward when even trying to hedge ball screens, let alone switch out onto the perimeter to mark smaller men.

This is something that can ultimately exploited should opponents deploy 5-out lineups with players who can attack closeouts. In a league that continually values spacing, this may be an unfortunate Achilles heel should the Hawks (ever) get back to contending.

Fit with the Hawks

The Hawks have two centers projected to make at least $14 million next season. There’s no reason to carry a third who would ink a similar deal to the 4-year, $62 million extension that kicks in this season for Onyeka Okongwu. Either Okongwu or Clint Capela, who is on an expiring contract worth just under $23 million — or even both — would assuredly be moved should the Hawks add Clingan to the mix.

Maybe the biggest thing working against Donovan Clingan is his injury history and conditioning. With such a big frame — and a pair of foot injuries in his recent background — carrying 280 pounds around throughout a grueling 82-game NBA season could spell trouble eventually. Clingan never topped 800 minutes in a college season, so it’s probably too much to ask him to log 30+ minutes a night at this stage. Presumably either Capela or Okongwu would have to act as insurance as a veteran backup to Clingan if taken.

With the breakout star of the Hawks set to occupy the power forward position for the foreseeable future, Clingan could use Jalen Johnson’s coverage ability on defense to pair in the frontcourt. The shooting mix doesn’t project much better than the Collins-Capela tandem of 2020-2023, at least not initially, but the passing from the duo can help open up the court as a proxy.

Final Thoughts

In most drafts, someone with Clingan’s profile probably wouldn’t be in consideration for the number one draft pick. 7-footers like Karl-Anthony Towns and Deandre Ayton offered a diverse set of offensive skills for their size. Victor Wembanyama profiled as game-wrecking agile big with perimeter skills on both ends of the floor.

But this draft is not those. There are just too many questions surrounding every player near the top.

Clingan, while skilled, is somewhat limited offensively and, while a dominant force defensively in the amateur ranks, there’s a possibility his drop big defense may go the way of the dinosaur at some point in the NBA.

But I do think he profiles favorably to recent impactful 7-footers’ games like Dereck Lively II, Mark Williams and Walker Kessler. I think his play will exceed all those guys just mentioned, which in this draft is enough to warrant a top selection. His play on both sides of the ball is ready-made for the NBA as UConn, under Dan Hurley, installed complex schemes that take time and effort to master.

My elevator pitch for him to go no. 1 is this: he’s an elite defensive floor raiser, the Hawks badly need to address almost a decade of leaky defenses (including last year’s 27th finish), and he’s a master of a lot of little aspects of basketball with an underrated room to grow his game. The Hawks were bereft of size last season — especially so when any of their frontcourt players went down. Adding a capable 7-foot-2 player would be a huge shot in the arm to that end.

A query of recent high major college players puts into perspective just how rare his combination of scoring, passing, rebounding and blocking is.

In my mind, for the closest parallel to Clingan you have to go back to 2005, when another two-year college plus-passing big man was selected no. 1 overall: Andrew Bogut. Bogut suffered through some injury issues during his NBA career with the main one a fluke arm injury that largely derailed the prime of his career.

Still, he was an immediate impact player for both the Bucks and the Warriors, routinely at around +7 points per 100 during his career. That’s elite winning impact from a non-creator.

Basketball-Reference

It looks increasingly like the organization favors taking Clingan at the top — but they would most assuredly prefer a trade down scenario to also land other asset(s) for their troubles. But with rumors of teams aiming to move up to the number three overall pick for Clingan, and a seeming lack of linkage from the organization to Alex Sarr, the Hawks should bite the bullet and call Donovan Clingan’s name come Wednesday evening.