The Portland Trail Blazers announced that they are assigning guard Shaedon Sharpe to the Rip City Remix, the team's G League affiliate, as he continues to increase his workload after having surgery on a core muscle in February.
Similar to when the Blazers assigned rookie Scoot Henderson to the Remix as he recovered from his ankle injury, Sharpe is not expected to see any game action in the G League. Instead, he will remain in Portland and practice with the team while the Blazers head out on a seven-game road trip.
When Sharpe initially went down with the injury, it appeared that his recovery timeline could cause him to miss the rest of this season for the Blazers. It would have made sense for the team to shut him down rather than bring him back with only a handful of games remaining and the team jockeying for lottery position.
But the Blazers saw value in Sharpe returning and getting a few games under his belt. Likely, the biggest benefit would be to share court time with Henderson. Both players dealt with injury this season, and the team didn't get as much of a look as they wanted to of their possible ‘backcourt of the future.' The team has struggled this year and, after blatantly tanking at the end of the last two seasons, Portland wants to prioritize internal development at the end of this year.
Sharpe's season in a nutshell
Blazers fans expected big things out of Sharpe this season after a rookie year that saw him average 9.9 points per game but close 2022-23 with a handful of massive scoring outbursts.
For the most part, Sharpe played well. Due to injuries to the entire rest of the Blazers backcourt, Sharpe was forced to log heavy court time for Portland, leading the NBA in minutes at one point. After aggravating his core muscle against the Cavaliers, Sharpe's performance plummeted. He exited the team's lineup in mid-January as the team hoped that rest and treatment would be enough for him to recover from his injury. Sharpe, after a two-week evaluation period, was kept out for another week before he eventually had surgery in early February.
So far this season, Sharpe has averaged 15.9 points and five rebounds in his 32 games played for the Blazers.
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