Trail Blazers guard Shaedon Sharpe expected to miss several weeks due to injury
Over the last three basketball seasons, Shaedon Sharpe has played fully in only the second one. He'll start the upcoming season on the mend, too.
On Saturday, the Portland Trail Blazers announced that, according to an MRI, Sharpe had suffered a small posterior labral tear in his left shoulder. He will begin rehab immediately and is expected to sit out the next 4-6 weeks, which would force him to miss at least the beginning of the 2024-25 season. The Blazers open the regular season on Oct. 23 against the Golden State Warriors.
Sharpe got off to a terrific start with Portland in 2023-24, but an abdominal strain suffered in Dec. 2023 cut his sophomore campaign short as he appeared in just 32 of 82 games.
As Kentucky fans know quite well, Sharpe sat out the entirety of his lone college season in 2021-22. A five-star recruit who reclassed to 2021, the 6-foot-6 wing graduated high school early so he could enroll at UK with intentions of redshirting and then taking the floor for the Wildcats the following season in 2022-23. Remember when John Calipari told the Big Blue Nation to show up and watch Sharpe warm up? Those were interesting times.
Unfortunately, it never panned out that way. Due to a plethora of reasons that aren't worth getting into it years later, Sharpe skipped college and jumped into the 2022 NBA Draft where he was scooped up by the Blazers with the 7th overall pick. However, his string of absences has continued into his professional career.
During his Summer League debut in 2022, Sharpe suffered a small labral tear in his left shoulder — the exact same injury he was diagnosed with this week — that held him out until the regular season. The native of Canada actually went on to have a productive freshman season, averaging 9.9 points per outing across 80 games played.
His upward trajectory continued into 2023-24. Prior to his season-ending injury, Sharpe was averaging 15.9 points, five rebounds, and 2.9 assists in 33.1 minutes per game on a tanking Portland team. But he underwent abdominal surgery in February before ultimately being ruled out for the rest of the season. He was finally cleared for training camp on Sept. 30 only to get pulled back off the court a week later.
Personally, I root for Sharpe's success. I hold no ill will toward him as a person and I believe he can be a very good NBA player one day. Here's to hoping this injury is just a small hiccup in the road.
