Shaedon Sharpe Progressing in Shoulder Rehab Ahead of Crucial Season
With an extension decision looming next summer and a lot of competition for playing time, Sharpe has a lot riding on his third season.
📍 TUALATIN, Ore. — When the Trail Blazers open the 2024-25 season on Wednesday against Golden State, Shaedon Sharpe not will be playing.
In the first week of training camp, Sharpe suffered a small labral tear in his left shoulder, the exact same injury that cut short his Summer League two years ago. At the time, the team said he would miss four to six weeks, putting his season debut somewhere in early to mid-November.
All indications are that Sharpe is making good progress. After spending one week with his arm in a sling, he’s now been cleared for non-contact basketball activities and has been shooting and doing ballhandling drills in practice. Based on that, it’s reasonable to expect he could be back in that time frame.
“It’s frustrating,” Sharpe said Tuesday after practice, speaking to reporters for the first time since the injury. “I didn’t get to play as many games as I wanted to last season. But I’m just staying the course and doing my rehab.”
Sharpe hasn’t played basketball since January, when a core muscle injury that had been bothering him for most of last season continued to linger, ultimately resulting in a February surgery. This summer, he was cleared to participate in training camp with the Canadian national team ahead of the Paris Olympics, and played in pickup and pro-am games.
After what was largely a wasted second season, both he and the Blazers have a lot riding on this year. His role, ceiling and future contract are all very much up in the air, and once he’s back from this shoulder injury, a lot of that will be decided over the next year.
Going into training camp, it was widely assumed that Sharpe would start alongside Anfernee Simons in the backcourt. He makes more sense skill-wise next to Simons that Scoot Henderson does, and as one of the highest-ceiling prospects in a rebuild that’s still in the early stages, who appeared on the verge of a breakout before last year’s core injury, he appeared to have the inside track on earning that spot.
When he does return in the coming weeks, it’s not a sure thing that Sharpe is back in the starting lineup. Toumani Camara, after an eye-opening training camp and preseason, looks to have won that spot over Henderson. (Chauncey Billups wouldn’t divulge his opening-night starters on Tuesday at practice, but it will be a surprise if Camara isn’t in the lineup.) If he keeps playing at the level he did over the four preseason games, it’s going to be hard to justify taking him out of the starting five.
Deni Avdija is also likely a lock to start in the other wing spot. It’s a good problem to have for a rebuilding team—too much talent that needs to play and develop—but after missing all of camp and the start of the season, Sharpe did not get the opportunity to earn the starting spot he likely would have, putting him behind the curve.
In a developmental year, the Blazers need some answers on what they have in Sharpe. The injury has delayed getting that clarity.
One day after the deadline passed for the 2021 draft class to agree to rookie-scale extensions, it can’t be ignored, either, that one year from now, that will be a decision the Blazers have to make about Sharpe, with potentially limited data.
A handful of players signed for the full max, $224 million over five years, earlier in the offseason: Detroit’s Cade Cunningham, Cleveland’s Evan Mobley, Toronto’s Scottie Barnes and Orlando’s Franz Wagner. Sharpe isn’t going to command anything close to that kind of money, but some of the other extensions that were handed out leading into Monday’s deadline could provide some clues as to what his value could be in a year.
In particular, the deals New Orleans agreed to with Trey Murphy III (four years, $112 million) and Orlando with Jalen Suggs and Atlanta with Jalen Johnson (five years, $150 million each) are calculated risks similar to the one Portland will face with Sharpe next offseason. Suggs overcame two very uneven, injury-plagued seasons at the beginning of his career to play 75 games last season with the Magic and make second team All-Defense. Johnson and Murphy are the kind of highly skilled and versatile wings teams around the NBA covet, and their teams ultimately looked past the injuries and inconsistency of their first three seasons and decided to pay them.
Sharpe is in the same spot going into his third season. When he’s played—80 out of 82 games in his rookie season and 32 games last season—he’s shown a lot. I happen to think he’s the most talented player on the Blazers’ entire roster and the one that, if he hits, could be a multiple-time All-Star. Last December before he got hurt, he put together a stretch of five straight games scoring at least 20 points on good efficiency before the effects of the core injury caught up to him.
But Sharpe’s star potential is still mostly theoretical at this point, and it will stay that way until he’s able to return. The Blazers have seen what the high end can look like. They haven’t seen it enough for an extension next summer to be a no-brainer. If he returns on schedule from this shoulder injury, stays healthy the rest of the year and picks up where he left off last winter, he could play himself into a lot of money. If he doesn’t, it will be a real decision on both sides—does Sharpe want to lock in a potentially lower number to have the security or bet on himself in restricted free agency in the summer of 2026? And how big of a bet do the Blazers want to make that how good he can be is how good he’s going to be?
The sooner Sharpe gets back on the court, the sooner these questions can be answered. And from the sound of it, it won’t be too much longer.
Youth and talent don't matter if he is never on the court. Let's hope for a healthy rest of the season and a mid-season trade to open up some development space.
Perhaps you can help me. When I heard about the change of Blazer games to KATU I knew the positive spin would lead to nothing. Now I find that my fubo package does not show Blazer games! There is no KATU 2.1 listing. I really don’t want to be blackmailed into spending $120 to watch a losing team. Am I missing something? Thanks