As Portland Trail Blazers training camp concludes and the preseason schedule commences, one name is conspicuously absent from the festivities. Fifth-year guard Shaedon Sharpe suffered a meniscus tear in August and is expected to miss the first few months of the season. This unfortunate development came just as the Blazers were making a turn into proposed contention, adding major talent to the backcourt. It also came just as Sharpe’s four-year, $90-million contract extension kicked in.
This confluence
of events has given rise to a spate of Sharpe-related questions in the Blazer’s Edge Mailbag over the past few weeks, including this one:
Dave,
How much will the Blazers miss Shae this season? They have plenty of guards but it seems like the shooting guard role was reserved for him still. Does his injury hurt them or just cut into their depth?
Kev
As we’ve alluded to, the Blazers are as well-set-up as possible to absorb an injury like this. Only a direct blow to the point guards—a position at which they’re literally four-deep—would be more survivable. If they’re truly in need without Shaedon, the answer begins with Jrue and ends with Holiday. Jrue can guard any of the wing/guard positions, already knows how to play off-ball, and has a better three-point shot than Sharpe (37.8% to 33.7%). You couldn’t ask for a better back-up plan. Heck, Holiday may have been a better first-line plan than Sharpe or starting one of the Ja Morant/Damian Lillard duo at shooting guard.
The loss will still hit Portland in a couple ways.
The first is flexibility. It’s possible that Sharpe or Holiday could have become trade candidates themselves this season. With Sharpe down, his value is muted. Can Portland trade Holiday and still put forth their best team? Obviously it depends on who they’d trade him for, but chances of bringing back a better one-to-one positional replacement are small.
Once upon a time it looked like the Blazers were going to be able to experiment during the first couple months of the season, perhaps leaving themselves a strategic move at the trade deadline next February. There will be no experimenting now: no proving ground for Sharpe, fewer lineup shuffles. That leaves mid-season deals a crap shoot. Even if they wouldn’t have taken advantage of it, it’s better to have the option than not.
The second, and more-far reaching, loss is the development of Sharpe himself. He’s played four NBA seasons. He’s only topped 70 games in two of them, one his rookie year when he played just 22 minutes per game. He won’t reach even 50 games this season probably. That makes three years out of five that he’s missed development time, two significantly.
It’s nearly impossible to overstate the impact of those absences on a young player like Sharpe, who came into the NBA without any college time, a complete and total project. He’s made leaps and bounds since then, but the road has been bumpy and filled with off-ramps. It’s a little like taking a trip that should be 10 hours according to GPS but it turns out to be 14 in real life. There’s been construction and stopping for snacks and once or twice the coach pulled this car over because the kids didn’t listen.
Theoretically Sharpe might have been an All-Star by now. Instead we’re wondering if he would have been able to hold onto his minutes and deeming him replaceable, though somewhat sadly so. Yes, he scored 21 points per game last season. It’s a feat worth celebrating. But the fact that those 21 points don’t cement him as the obvious answer at shooting guard for all time shows you what you need to know about Sharpe’s progress.
This year was likely to be key for Sharpe. He would have either started or been a key bench player with veterans surrounding him to check and push him. We were about to see if he could step up to be part of a Big 3 on a decent-to-good team. Now we get to read rehabilitation reports and watch him re-learn and re-integrate on the happy day he does return.
The Blazers aren’t likely to miss Shaedon Sharpe systemically as much as they’ll miss Shaedon Sharpe as Shaedon Sharpe, for his own sake (and for the sake of his potential value). The loss might not be quite as visible on the surface as losing Donovan Clingan or Toumani Camara would be, but underneath, the subdural damage might prove greater than it appears.
Either way, this is another on a growing list of semi-cursed developments when it comes to Portland’s in-between-eras growth plans. I wonder if someday Blazers historians will be able to draw a line between Anfernee Simons and Sharpe, saying, “All of those years of drafting didn’t produce much. The players might have been good, but the circumstances surrounding them didn’t allow us to see it.”
Thanks for the question! You can send yours to blazersub@gmail.com and we’ll try to get to as many as possible!
