Brooklyn Nets center Day'Ron Sharpe has the potential to have a solid season now that he is likely to be the starting center with Nic Claxton being traded to the Chicago Bulls. While Brooklyn's offense will be led by veteran forwards Michael Porter Jr. and Julius Randle, it looks like Sharpe could be the most impactful player on the team this season, at least according to a certain metric.
In a recent article by ESPN, Dean Oliver put together a statistic of which players will be the top-7 most efficient players as per the net points per 100 possessions. According to Oliver, Sharpe is predicted to be the most efficient player on the Nets by that metric (+1.3) followed by forwards Michael Porter Jr. (+1.1) and Julius Randle (+0.5) as the only players to be positive
in the stat.
"It's about a new, all-encompassing NBA metric ESPN has created called Net Points, which uses play-by-play data to evaluate a player's performance," Oliver wrote when describing what the metric does. "It quantifies every rebound, shot, turnover and free throw and assigns credit and blame to the players on the court. It divides credit and blame based on the difficulty of the players' contributions to the success or failure of the team."
After Sharpe, Porter, and Randle, the next four Nets in the metric are: guard Egor Demin (-0.8), rookie Mikel Brown Jr. (-1.1), guard Keon Ellis (-1.4), and guard Ben Saraf (-2.2). Sharpe, Porter, Randle, and Demin are projected to be in the starting lineup this upcoming season, but Brown has a chance to be the starting point guard if he's able to beat out Saraf and Nolan Traore in training camp.
Sharpe, 24, is coming off a 2025-26 season in which he averaged 8.7 points, 6.7 rebounds, and 2.3 assists per game while shooting 60.1% from the field and 67.8% from the free-throw line. Over the past few seasons, Sharpe has shown his ability to not only hang with most starting centers during his spot starts, but excel in those situations as well. This season will be Sharpe's first test as the starting center on a nightly basis.
This article originally appeared on Nets Wire: Day'Ron Sharpe predicted to be Nets' most efficient player this season
