Blazers’ focus is Sharpe in what they hope is a major draft night coup

First-round draft pick Shaedon Sharpe drives to the basket during a pre-draft workout at the Blazers’ practice facility last week (courtesy Trail Blazers)

The important phrase to remember: “Time will tell.”

It will take time — perhaps a couple of years, maybe even longer — to fully judge how Portland general manager Joe Cronin did on his first foray as shot-caller on NBA draft day.

Joe Cronin was active in his first year running the show for the Blazers during NBA draft week

Earlier in the week, Cronin pulled off what I would call a no-brainer, agreeing to a trade with the Detroit Pistons for high-scoring forward Jerami Grant while giving away … virtually nothing.

On Thursday night, the Trail Blazer GM did it with dice in his hands, taking mystery man Shaedon Sharpe with the seventh pick in the draft.

Sharpe, who turned 19 on May 30, is well aware the Blazers’ strength is at the guard position with the likes of Damian Lillard, Anfernee Simons and Josh Hart. Sharpe learned a little about the franchise during a June 14 pre-draft workout at the Blazers’ training facility, during which he met Lillard.

“They have a lot of great guards who can really play,” the native of London, Ontario, said. “I can’t wait to learn from Damian. He is a great guard himself and he has been in this league for an amount of time now.

Damian Lillard is all eyes as he watches future Blazer Shaedon Sharpe during a pre-draft workout (courtesy Trail Blazers)

“I’m really excited about to come to Portland.”

Sharpe has a wealth of potential, a 6-11 1/2 wingspan and all-around offensive skills, but frighteningly little experience with high levels of the sport.

The 6-5 1/2, 200-pound shooting guard last played a counting game in May 2020 with Dream City Christian in Glendale, Ariz. Sharpe, the consensus No. 1-ranked prospect from the 2022 class after playing his final season of high school ball with the Dreamers, didn’t enroll at Kentucky until January of this year. He practiced but never played for the Wildcats, leaving NBA scouts with less solid evidence to ponder than any other prospect in the draft.

“Unique situation,” Cronin said. “Didn’t play college. Wasn’t seen or evaluated nearly as much as all of these other guys.”

Cronin and his front-office staff gathered game video from where they could find it — as a member of the Canada team that won the silver medal at the U16 Americas Championship in Brazil in 2019, with various AAU teams in recent years. But they leaned on personal experience from watching Sharpe in one-on-one drills at the Chicago pre-draft camp and from the three-on-three workouts in Portland last week.

“We really dug into the (video) we had of him and watched as much as we could,” Cronin said. “But with Shaedon, who didn’t have that body of work, we had to rely more heavily on (the Chicago) combine and the workout here. He was really impressive, and it wasn’t just court time. During the workouts, you get to spend a lot of time with them as people and learn what drives and motivates them and what they’re about.”

What impressed the Blazer brass?

“His demeanor,” Cronin said. “His seriousness. The way he competed in the three-on-three workout. It really opened our eyes to where he is a solid player defensively, and you couldn’t rattle him offensively.”

Sharpe wasn’t the only player the Blazers considered at No. 7, and there were other teams holding the next few picks who held high interest in the promising Canadian. It may be that Benedict Mathurin — a 6-6, 210-pound wing from Arizona, who went to Indiana with the sixth pick — was higher than Sharpe on Portland’s draft board. Sharpe was the one left, however, and the Blazers gobbled him up with the idea that he might be able to earn rotation minutes as a rookie in their crowded backcourt.

“He is talented enough to play right away,” Cronin told me. “He will get some minutes. He is going to have to come in and earn it, but talent-wise he is very capable of competing.”

“Shaedon is an incredible talent. His future is as bright as many of the players we were considering that are a little more experienced.”

Though he didn’t get a minute of playing time out of Sharpe, Kentucky coach John Calipari agrees.

“In my mind, he’s the No. 1 pick (in the entire draft),” Calipari told a reporter in February after beating out the likes of Kansas, Arizona, Oregon and Alabama for the college rights to Sharpe. “How can I say I know what the No. 1 draft pick looks like? Because I’ve had four (the others: Anthony Davis, Karl-Anthony Towns and John Wall).”

Sharpe was a two-sport standout through middle school in Ontario, a prized running back until breaking his leg playing football before his freshman year in high school. He averaged 13 points, 3.7 rebounds and 2.3 assists while shooting 68 percent from the field for Canada in the U16 Americas Championship in Brazil, but was not on the Canadian team in the U19 World Cup in 2021.

At first, Sharpe enrolled at Kentucky in January to prepare for the 2022-23 season.

“My whole mindset coming in was to practice with the guys and work on my craft,” Sharpe said.

Calipari pushed the idea of playing Sharpe the second half of last season when the coach realized Sharpe would be draft-eligible and was leaning that way, with scouts eyeing him as a lottery pick. Sharpe passed on playing for Cal and, in April, declared for the draft.

“Had he played in college this year, he might have gone higher than seven,” Cronin said. “Had he gone back and played (with Kentucky) next season, he could have been even higher.”

Cronin wasn’t sure what was going to happen with the No. 7 pick until the final couple of days. From the end of the Chicago combine in late May, he worked the phones, swapping potential trade options with other clubs — “pick/swap ideas, trades involving a pick, trades involving a pick for a player outright” — while continuing to evaluate the draft.

“As the process went on, I became more and more enamored of (retaining) pick seven,” Cronin said. “Then it was, ‘You’ll have to wow us with a deal to get us to move the pick.’ It ended up that nobody wowed us.”

With the veteran Grant headed Portland’s way, it made even more sense to keep the pick and acquire an important piece of the future — a part of the equation for any GM.

“I try to evaluate those things independently in its exclusivity,” Cronin said. “I tried to not view it in that lens. But it’s only natural if you plug a hole in one way (with Grant), it allows you to be a little more talent-based (with the pick).”

Cronin and his staff had also come to the conclusion that the ’22 draft class wasn’t rich only at the very top.

“It became more and more evident that there was some real talent in (the No. 7) draft range,” he said. “There was another solid tier behind the top three. It seems those players (behind them) are going to be pretty high level.”

Sharpe called his route to the NBA “difficult.”

“Just because you can’t have a perfect career. …there are going to be some ups and downs,” he said. “Going from high school and not playing the college season and then straight to the NBA is quite a journey. But every step of the way, I just fought and had fun with it.”

When it was suggested that coach Chauncey Billups likes players with a good bit of “dog” in him, Sharpe shrugged.

“I feel like I’ve been a dog,” he said. “I love to compete. I love to win and get better. I feel like I showed in the workout that I could get a lot of defensive stops.”

Billups had a personal interest in Portland’s other draft selection Thursday night. In the second round, with the next-to-last (57th) pick, the Blazers took Jabari Walker, a 6-8, 200-pound forward from Billups’ alma mater, Colorado. Walker, the son of former NBA forward Samaki Walker, was “one of the two most underrated forwards in this draft,” ESPN’s Jay Bilas said.

“Chauncey is excited about getting a Colorado guy,” Cronin said. “He watches more Colorado basketball than other schools. He has a good feel for their players. Jabari is a two-year guy at Colorado and showed some flashes of what we thought was appealing. He has a lot of refining and fine-tuning to do, but we like his base.”

The Blazers caught Detroit at just the right time to land Grant, an eight-year pro who averaged 19.2 points last season. The Pistons are in a cut-salary/rebuild mode and knew they were unlikely to re-sign Grant, who will be on the final year of a contract that calls for him to make nearly $21 million next season. Portland was able to use the $20.9 million trade exception it got in the CJ McCollum-to-New Orleans deal, packaged with Milwaukee’s 2025 first-round pick, Portland’s second-round pick and two future second-round selections.

The Pistons wound up with $43 million in salary cap space; the Blazers reaped a 28-year-old power forward who should be entering his prime years.

It was sweet redemption for Cronin on a personal level, too. He had authorized the tank-a-thon that resulted in losses in 19 of Portland’s final 21 games, all for the chase of a lottery pick from New Orleans. Lo and behold, the Pelicans — led by McCollum — cut the heart out of his old team by making the playoffs and turning the Blazers’ bounty to mush. Now the mush is in the Pistons’ hands. (Correction: In the New York Knicks hands. They acquired the now thrice-swapped 2025 first-round pick while sending veteran guard Kemba Walker and promising Memphis center Jalen Duren, the 13th draft choice, to the Pistons.)

Cronin can’t talk about the Grant trade until it becomes official on July 1. On Thursday night, though, he was more than willing to describe the first draft night with him in charge, a much different role than sitting alongside his predecessor in the War Room as Neil Olshey’s salary cap expert for the previous 10 years. This time, he was flanked by Billups, owner Jody Allen and vice chair Bert Kolde, president/business operations Dewayne Hankins, and assistant GMs Andrae Patterson, Mike Schmitz and Sergi Oliva, among others.

“A lot of parts of this job have been different than that I was expecting, especially early on,” Cronin said. “I thought I was becoming ready to become a GM. It was funny how quickly I got humbled. I thought I knew these things? I didn’t know anything. It’s a huge learning experience. It’s just different when you’re sitting a seat or two over. You’re leading the discussion, you’re leading the recommendations we’re sending to ownership.

“But it has been incredible because of the people around me. They do such a good job and are so much fun, it takes a lot of the pressure away from me. Close to a dozen people were in there tonight, and each of them heavily contributed. It’s such a group effort. My job is to keep it organized and keep us pointed in the right direction.”

Cronin’s summer will be busy. He has to negotiate free agent contracts to retain Jusuf Nurkic and Anfernee Simons (restricted). By my figuring, counting only $3.9 million guaranteed from Eric Bledsoe’s contract and adding in Sharpe’s $4.94 million rookie deal, the Blazers are at about $104 million — and that’s without signing Nurkic and Simons to deals that could total $35 million. That would put the Blazers above the league’s $122 salary cap limit and creeping toward the luxury tax threshold of $149 million.

Even so, Cronin said he is on the lookout for more talent. Free agency opens July 1. The Blazers still have trade exceptions of $6.5 million and $3 million along with Bledsoe’s full contract of $19.3 million.

“We have a few tools,” he said. “We hope to use at least some of them. We’ll continue working the trade lines, working for upgrades. When the time come, we’ll enter the free agent market and look for specific needs.

“We’re trying to be really aggressive. We know we’re not good enough. We want to get better.”

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