Donovan Clingan is the best defender in the 2024 NBA draft

Championship defenses are built around defensive anchors. With UConn fresh off a National Championship, Donovan Clingan is looking to prove that he is one of those anchors.

Art by @heisnotahooper/X

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The University of Connecticut, better known as UConn, brought home the team’s fifth National Championship at the conclusion of the 2022-23 NCAA basketball season.

The team featured three new rookies in the NBA, two of which who were drafted in the first forty picks: Jordan Hawkins, Andre Jackson Jr. and Adama Sanogo. However, the best player on the team, may have been hiding in plain sight this whole time, playing just 13 minutes per game in his freshman year.

Enter: Donovan Clingan. The seven-foot-two and 280 pound center with a seven-foot-seven wingspan who is going to be featured as the centerpiece on a re-tooled Huskies team that will look to go back-to-back in 2024.

It is my opinion that Clingan is the single-best defender in the 2024 NBA draft. After a late rise up NBA draft boards, following the NCAA tournament, Clingan shocked scouts by choosing to return to UConn for his sophomore year. In the minutes he played, he raised UConn’s defense from elite to impossibly good, with an adjusted defensive rating of 77.9 while Clingan was on the court.

Clingan can be a legitimate anchor of a great defense. His play time was limited last year, but he was arguably the most impactful player for UConn defensively, and it starts with the rim protection. Clingan blocked shots at a near disproportionate rate in his freshman year, leading the team with 1.8 blocks per game — again, in just over 13 minutes per game. He has great timing on his jumps, and his length alone makes practically raises the rim for offensive players looking to get a bucket in close.

A lot of big players can knock back shots consistently, though, but their impact on a defense can be overestimated because of this. Not Clingan. His rim defense goes beyond just the blocks numbers, altering the ones he can’t get a hand on. Last season, teams shot 42.5% at the rim with Clingan as the primary defender, logging just 0.85 points per possession on what is deemed the easiest shot in the game.

His size alone is enough to clog the paint against potential penetrators but his ability to move his feet at that size is the separator between him and other giants. Of course, he’s not going to slide perfectly with quick-footed guards every time. He does get beat on occasion, but his footwork at the point of attack as well as his recovery speed is remarkable for a person of his size.

In today’s NBA especially, bigs can’t just stand in the paint and hope to have an impact. Range and mobility is essential, allowing bigs to rotate and closeout effectively, defend in more pick and roll coverages, and switch when necessary.

Being able to defend in the pick and roll is the separator for big men as defensive centerpieces. At this point in the league’s history, a team is going to run 20-30 pick and rolls every single night and was a top two offensive play type in the half court for just about every team in the league.

So, how does Clingan project in his ability to defend the pick and roll? For the reasons stated above, pretty damn well.

Primarily, whatever team he lands on will want to keep him in drop coverage. His length and foot speed give him specific advantages in these situations. He can bother shooters with his length without needing to play at the level of the screen, practically keeping both the ball handler and roll man within arms length at all times, jumping on a pull-up from the guard or smacking a lob off the backboard.

Clingan’s versatility in these coverages is not the highlight of his defensive skill set. He’s masterful in drop — despite limited possessions — and has the ability to be a Brook Lopez- or Walker Kessler-type of defender in the pick and roll, perhaps with even more agility than the two.

However, he lacks the switchability of an Evan Mobley or Nicolas Claxton, or the pure ground coverage of a Jaren Jackson Jr. or Anthony Davis. Not everybody can be those guys though, and those comparisons are not meant to knock Clingan, more so painting a picture of strengths and weaknesses.

The big man is the most valuable position in the league on defense. While offense has moved out to the perimeter, the need for an anchor around the rim has only increased. Increased space leads to more offensive mobility, giving more and wider lanes to attack the basket. It’s the reason why the spread pick and roll is the most common play in basketball.

In the modern NBA, point-of-attack defenders need to do just enough to keep perimeter players from getting open shots. What a player with Clingan’s skillset can do is allow those players to defend more aggressively outside the three-point line, the goal being to syphon offensive players towards the rim, where they will be swallowed by the rim protector.

Points are going to be scored in the NBA, and the defensive efficiency numbers that Clingan has been able to put up at the college levels thus far will not translate at the next level. However, what Clingan allows a team to do defensively is make the shot diet more difficult. Three pointers will be defended more aggressively and, of course, the shots around the rim will be made more difficult with Clingan around the rim, leaving lower value shots like long two-point jumpers and floaters.

In my opinion, Donovan Clingan is the best defender in the 2024 NBA draft class, both from a value and production standpoint. Looking ahead into the future, his role and skillset is something that has and will continue to hold value for years to come.

The elite shot blocking numbers and measurements are only the minimum of what Clingan offers on defense. At seven-foot-two with a seven-foot-seven wingspan and a lot of weight to throw around, he moves surprisingly quick. He might get blown by every once and a while but he wins at the point of attack more often than most players his size would and recovers with speed.

The eye test shows an elite defender. The numbers back it up. And the measurements are freakish. Clingan checks all boxes and in all likelihood, he’ll be stepping into a much bigger role with the Huskies this season, cementing his spot at the top of the list of best defenders in the 2024 NBA draft class.