Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I don’t think Nestor Cortes’s former Yankees teammates are going to be too happy with his comments about last year’s World Series.
In today’s SI:AM:
👏 NBA youngster’s career night
🔥 Pistons keep rolling
📝 NFLPA report cards
A career high, and a career-best dunk
You probably didn’t have any reason to tune in to Wednesday night’s game between the Washington Wizards and Portland Trail Blazers, two teams that are a combined 47 games under .500. But if you did watch, you got to see Blazers guard Shaedon Sharpe have the game of his life.
Sharpe had a career-high 36 points (on 13-of-26 shooting), with eight rebounds and five assists. It was the most points scored by a player off the bench this season and the most by a Blazers player off the bench since Travis Outlaw had 36 on April 18, 2007. It was an all-around excellent night for Sharpe, who led all scorers as the Blazers beat the Wizards, 129–121, but there’s one play in particular that had the basketball world abuzz.
Early in the second quarter, Sharpe soared in the air to block a Corey Kispert layup attempt from behind. Then, on the other end, he threw down what is likely the best dunk in the NBA this season, intercepting an ill-advised pass and dunking all over poor Justin Champagnie. He rose into the air with ease until his head was level with the rim and then slammed home as powerful a dunk as you’ll ever see.
“I just started like laughing, like, ‘Wow, man. Poor kid up under him,’ ” Blazers coach Chauncey Billups said of the dunk. “That was pretty incredible.”
Sharpe is known for his outstanding athleticism and has thrown down plenty of impressive dunks in his short career. Here’s a 10-minute compilation of his best slams that the NBA posted on YouTube after Wednesday’s stunner. But Sharpe believes that one stands out above the rest.
“I think it’s one of the best ones [I’ve had],” he said in an on-court interview after the game. “I don’t know how I got there but I got it, and it was crazy.
“I just jumped. I thought I was too far, so I was just gonna throw it in. But then I reached out and I said, ‘Why not try to dunk it?’ So I tried it and it happened.”
Sharpe has had a somewhat unusual career. He was ranked as the No. 1 player in the 2022 recruiting class but reclassified to the class of ’21 and graduated from high school early to enroll at Kentucky in January ’22. Sharpe had originally intended to redshirt and make his debut for the Wildcats in the ’22–23 season but instead declared for the ’22 NBA draft without having played a college game.
The Blazers took Sharpe with the No. 7 pick in the draft and he saw plenty of action as a rookie for a lousy Portland team, playing in 80 games and averaging 9.9 points per game. He had begun to take a step forward in his second season, finding a spot in the starting lineup and becoming a more integral part of the Portland offense, before an abdominal injury ended his season in early January after just 32 games.
Sharpe has picked up where he left off this season, though. He averaged 18.0 points per game over his first 33 games of the season, tied for the team lead over that span, but Billups still saw areas where Sharpe could improve. On Jan. 19, Billups moved Sharpe from the starting lineup to a bench role, citing a need for Sharpe to work on his defense.
“I don’t believe in playing on one side of the ball, I just can’t allow that on my watch,” Billups explained at the time. “[Sharpe] has to be better.”
Billups said after that first game that he was impressed with Sharpe’s defensive effort off the bench, but he has remained in a sixth-man role ever since, coming off the bench in each of his last 16 games. The move has worked very well for the Blazers, who are 13–5 since Sharpe was moved to the bench. Before Jan. 19, Portland ranked 27th in the league in defensive rating. Since Sharpe was moved to the bench, it ranks second.
The Blazers are still in the depths of their rebuilding process, 4.5 games behind the final spot in the play-in tournament, but Billups appears to have unlocked something with this lineup change, maximizing Sharpe’s offensive capabilities while giving other players more minutes to clamp down on defense. At the very least, it shows that Billups is a smart coach who should be allowed to continue piloting this rebuild.
The best of Sports Illustrated
- Albert Breer’s latest report from the NFL combine leads with an update on Matthew Stafford’s future with the Rams.
- Tom Verducci was at Mets camp in Florida, where former Yankees closer Clay Holmes’s attempt to make the transition to the starting rotation is suddenly a lot more significant to the Mets’ 2025 hopes.
- Matt Verderame broke down the annual release of the NFLPA report cards, which generally showed players were more satisfied with their teams this season than in previous years—although there were certainly exceptions.
- The Pistons kept rolling with a blowout win over the mighty Celtics.
- The NFL is finally getting rid of the chain gang in favor of measuring the line to gain using electronic technology.
- The NFL is also considering changing the overtime rules ahead of next season.
- Thomas Bach is stepping down as head of the International Olympic Committee.
The top five…
… things I saw last night:
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | Shaedon Sharpe Had Himself a Night.
