Shaedon Sharpe’s place in Portland looks shakier than it did a year ago.
The Trail Blazers have reshaped their backcourt, and that overhaul is likely to squeeze Sharpe out of the featured offensive role he once held. Last season, he started only about half the time, but when he was on the floor, Portland still leaned on him heavily.
He finished with a team-high 30.5 percent usage rate, even ahead of the Blazers’ newest All-Star, Deni Avdija. That alone hinted the hierarchy was due for a reset.
And reset it has.
Portland finally appears to have addressed its playmaking issues after finishing dead last in turnovers last season. Now the Blazers have options, with head coach Micah Nori able to choose between running the offense through Ja Morant, Damian Lillard, or Avdija.
The cleanest version of this team, at least on paper, seems to be the one where Avdija is the engine. Portland’s ceiling is highest when he’s operating as that jumbo guard, the kind of oversized creator who can tilt a defense the way Luka Doncic or Cade Cunningham does.
The problem is sorting out everyone else around him.
Morant brings a different kind of challenge. His game is built on having the ball, getting downhill, and creating in the paint. That makes him a tricky fit next to Avdija, because the two of them want to do similar things and Morant doesn’t really give you much as an off-ball spacer.
Then there’s the question of what Portland actually got in its buy-low swing for a former two-time All-Star.
Lillard adds another layer entirely. If he can get back to form, he fits much better next to Avdija than Morant does. But a starting backcourt of Morant and Lillard would come with obvious defensive concerns, and Nori has to decide how much of that he can live with.
Those choices will shape whether Portland keeps its defensive identity or shifts toward a more balanced approach. Either way, Sharpe does not look like a lock to remain in the starting five, and he certainly doesn’t look like the player who will lead the team in usage again.
That’s a big turn for a player who arrived as the top ten pick meant to help launch this rebuild in 2022. Sharpe is still just 23 and still has the kind of star upside teams chase.
He keeps getting better, too. The question is how much of that has translated into winning impact.
The answer, so far, has been uneven.
He’s already been benched by two straight head coaches. Chauncey Billups sat him down mid-season because of defense, and Tiago Splitter left him out of the playoff rotation entirely in Portland’s first-round series against San Antonio.
The Blazers still believe enough in Sharpe to commit long-term, giving him a four-year, $90 million rookie-scale extension last summer. But that doesn’t make him untouchable. Not with the backcourt now looking crowded and the fit questions getting louder.
Of the guards on the roster, it may be Sharpe - not Scoot Henderson - who ends up as the odd man out. The concern is scalability.
A scorer who thrives with the ball, struggles defensively, and hasn’t been a reliable three-point shooter can help in the right role, especially if the offense bogs down. Off the bench, he could still be useful as a jolt of shot creation.
But as a central piece in a system that should feature more movement, the fit gets murkier. Nori made that emphasis clear at his introductory press conference, and Sharpe’s style cuts against it.
Unless he takes a real step in areas he has not shown yet, it’s hard to see how his ball-heavy game survives in a Portland offense now built around more polished creators.
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