Shaedon Sharpe has agreed to a four-year, $90 million extension of his rookie-scale contract with the Trail Blazers, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania — a move that keeps the hyper-athletic young swingman in Portland through the end of the decade, and that represents a vote of confidence that the seventh overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft can be a player of consequence for the next competitive iteration of the Blazers.
The new deal for Sharpe comes on the heels of extensions in Portland for general manager Joe Cronin and head coach Chauncey Billups after the 2024-25 NBA season. The Blazers finished 36-46 — their fourth straight sub-.500 season following the firing of longtime former head coach Terry Stotts. They improved dramatically over the course of the campaign, though, bouncing back from a 9-20 start to go 27-26 after Christmas. Portland posted the West’s eighth-best record and net rating after Feb. 1, fueled by a defense that allowed fewer points per possession over its final 34 games than any team outside of Golden State, Oklahoma City, Orlando and Boston — all playoff teams (and, in the Thunder, the eventual NBA champions).
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While correlation isn’t causation, it seems notable that the Blazers’ significant defensive uptick began in earnest when Sharpe moved from the starting lineup to the bench mid-season. After a 22-point beatdown by the Rockets stretched their losing streak to five games, the Blazers ranked 28th in the NBA in defensive efficiency. Billups sent Sharpe to the bench, explicitly calling out his shortcomings on the defensive end of the floor.
“We need to be better defensively. … He’s struggled a little bit,” Billups said, according to Sean Highkin of the Rose Garden Report. “As a head coach, as I’m trying to build and develop these guys, I don’t believe in playing on one side of the ball. I just can’t allow that. I can’t have that on my watch. Shae has to get better. I’ve seen him be so good so many different times, but he’s just struggled a little bit. And when he struggles, there needs to be consequences for that.”
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