Not a lot went right for the Portland Trail Blazers last season. Damian Lillard was forced to carry an injury-riddled and talent-deficient team for too long, which eventually forced the organization to pull the plug on 2021-22 entirely and put any healthy veteran player left on the bench.
Not a lot has necessarily gone right for the Blazers this summer, either. One of the few positives of the offseason was Portland jumping to No. 3 in the draft lottery, which gave the franchise an opportunity to select a potential all-NBA point guard in Scoot Henderson…which led, in part, to a Lillard trade request and everything that’s happened since.
Before the Scoot excitement, however, came last year’s potential glimmer of superstar potential that is Shaedon Sharpe.
Portland’s 2022 lottery pick (seventh overall) had an up-and-down rookie season, which was to be expected from a 19-year-old who entered the draft with more athleticism and potential than skill. The script flipped at the end of the year, though, when those healthy vets sat and Sharpe took over the offense to the tune of 23.7 points, 5.8 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game on 46/36/78 shooting splits.
Some draft gurus were less impressed than others when the Blazers selected Sharpe, citing the high risk level associated with a player who had never played at a level higher than AAU.
Here are some of those rather disappointed in-the-moment takes and how hilariously wrong they’ve already become.
Portland Trail Blazers: 3 laughably wrong Shaedon Sharpe draft takes
Shaedon gets the worst grade of any top-20 pick
Sport’s Illustrated’s Jeremy Woo was clearly not a fan of the Blazers’ decision to take Sharpe. He gave the pick a B- grade, which doesn’t seem too bad on first glance – until you notice that he didn’t give any other grade lower than a B- until No. 21.
The Cleveland Cavaliers got a B- for their selection of Ochai Agbaji, but Woo didn’t toss a “C” into the mix until the Denver Nuggets’ pick of Christian Braun. (That didn’t turn out so great, either, as the former Kansas Jayhawk played in every postseason game during the Nuggets’ championship run.)
To be fair, Woo cited fit more than talent when giving Portland it’s B-. He expected the Blazers to aim for a more NBA-ready prospect – mentioning New Orleans’ Dyson Daniels as his preferred choice – than a raw player with upside.
Still, handing the Blazers one of the lowest grades in the entire first round and justifying it with the fit-over-upside approach (always a risky play in the NBA, especially in the top 10) was a bad call. Tough day for Jeremy.
Sharpe is talented but just too raw
Another B- for the Blazers, this time from John Fanta, a college basketball analyst at Fox Sports. Maybe it’s not surprising that someone like Sharpe, who never played college basketball, received one of the lower grades from someone such as Fanta.
The odd part about this grade is how Fanta sings Shaedon’s praises, with analysis like, “He’s super athletic and long, and can play above the rim. His shooting touch is elite, and he has the ability to provide a scoring burst for a team at the next level. While Sharpe fits the mold of a score-first guard, he is a capable passer and can make plays for teammates.”
Shaedon is labeled as a high-risk, high-reward pick (an across-the-board consensus phrase), but the Fox Sports analyst is more concerned about the risk than the reward. He mentions a lack of game time beyond the high school-level and questions whether or not Sharpe will be able to translate those aforementioned skills to the NBA level, specifically pointing out his defense and shot selection, which he wasn’t wrong about.
He concludes by pointing out how talented of a scorer Sharpe can be, adding that this is a need for Portland, but that “there’s just such a high level of variance with what Sharpe ends up being” and questions if he’s a win-now player.
No, he wasn’t a win-now player, and he wasn’t expected to be. So why grade him so low if you knew what you were getting in the first place?
Sharpe, Jabari Walker earn Blazers a “D” grade
This one…yikes.
Charles Curtis of USA Today’s For the Win was not a fan of either of Portland’s picks in 2022 – Shaedon or Jabari Walker. The Blazers’ class ranked 23rd out of 30 NBA teams, according to Curtis, calling Sharpe “a head-scratcher of a pick.”
“Sharpe could be a star … but that could be in a few years,” Curtis wrote. “The Blazers are trying to win now with Damian Lillard coming back from injury, so wouldn’t you want a player more ready? Maybe Sharpe is and we’re all wrong, but that seemed weird.”
Honestly, none of that analysis is wrong, per se. It may have been a head-scratcher to take someone as inexperienced as Shaedon with a top-10 pick, it may take him a few years to be a star and the Blazers were trying to win immediately with Lillard, all of which could have made someone question the selection of a player like Sharpe.
Maybe it was, in fact, “weird.”
However, it’s also fair to say that he exceeded all those expectations and showed he could become a star sooner rather than later. Maybe it won’t take years.
As things shook out, the fact that Sharpe was raw and not ready for the NBA didn’t prove to be a detriment to a team that ended the season tanking anyway. Now, the Blazers have a potential superstar on their hands who may be in line for a breakout season, and he just so happens to be playing with this year’s lottery pick – another potential star – as Portland moves on from Lillard and into a rebuild.
It’s safe to say the Trail Blazers’ decision to grab Sharpe with the No. 7 pick in the 2022 NBA Draft was a wise one, despite what analysts had to say at the time.