The Portland Trail Blazers, who were one of the league’s most-injured NBA teams last season, have just been handed heartbreaking news: Shaedon Sharpe sustained a torn meniscus and is projected to be out for the next six months.
The injury is the final sign that the Shaedon Sharpe-Scoot Henderson backcourt, a pairing that, heading into 2024, was supposed to usher in a new era for the Portland Trail Blazers, is officially finished before it ever got a chance to start.
Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe Have Barely Shared an NBA Court
The Blazers drafted Shaedon Sharpe with the No. 7 overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft while still hanging on to the Damian Lillard era. Sharpe was going to be a developmental project on a team that still hoped it would be competing in the Western Conference. However, he made sense as a long-term fit alongside Lillard as a shooting guard.
Once the 2023 season failed, the team made a hard pivot. The lottery balls awarded Portland the No. 3 overall pick, allowing them to draft Scoot Henderson and move Lillard to Milwaukee.
The stage was set for Henderson and Sharpe to develop alongside one another on a tanking team. The plan was for them to grow into a ferocious, athletic backcourt duo of the future.
What has followed since then has been anything but.
Since the start of the 2023-24 NBA season, in a total of 10,519 regular-season minutes for the Portland Trail Blazers, Henderson and Sharpe have shared the court for a total of 1,102 minutes.
That’s 10.4% of possible time on the court together for the Blazers’ No. 7 and No. 3 picks of 2023 and 2024.
Scoot and Shaedon Have Been Flawed NBA Players
Now, granted, in the time that Henderson and Sharpe have played, whether that be together or alone, it’s not like the Blazers have thrived.
In their 1,102 minutes together over the past three seasons, Portland has a net rating of -6.0.
That’s slightly better than the net rating of -6.6 in the 2,700 minutes that Scoot has played without Shaedon since then; it’s a bit worse than the net rating of -4.4 in the 3,322 minutes that Shaedon has played without Scoot; and it’s significantly worse than net rating of -2.3 in the 3,395 minutes that neither have been on the court over the past three seasons.
Granted, a lot of the reason for these negative ratings is the fact that the Blazers have been a terrible, often tanking, team. In 2024, Scoot’s rookie year, the Blazers had one of the worst records in the NBA. Scoot was also a disaster that season, posting a -8.2 on/off rating that season according to Basketball-Reference.
Last season, when the Blazers made the playoffs, Scoot missed the first 51 games of the season after severely tearing his hamstring a month before the season. In ironic fashion, as soon as Scoot returned, Shaedon strained his calf. That injury kept him out until right before the 2026 playoffs.
In total, Sharpe and Henderson played just 14 minutes together last season.
Logically, one could assume that last season — Sharpe’s fourth and Henderson’s third season — would have been the one for Scoot and Shaedon to take that next step together, surrounded by some talent in the frontcourt and on the wings. But it wasn’t.
The Blazers’ Guard Depth Already Buried Shaedon Sharpe
Sharpe’s career was already on a slippery trajectory before this injury.
Former-interim Head Coach Tiago Splitter essentially benched Sharpe in the playoffs, playing him for 22 minutes in Game 1 of the series, but just six in Game 5.
The Blazers’ lone game-changing move this offseason was to bring Ja Morant into the fold — another offense-first guard who will command a hefty amount of playing time, so long as he’s healthy.
Portland trading for Morant already made little sense given that franchise icon Damian Lillard was returning for his age-36 season. Cap the mess off with Scoot’s contract year and Jrue Holiday’s necessary defensive presence, and it really did feel like Shaedon was going to be the odd man out. It was hard to see a world where he shared the backcourt with either Lillard or Morant given each of their three of their defensive limitations. If Head Coach Micah Nori was going to play anyone as a small-ball SF, Holiday would be first up on that list.
But given the age of Lillard and Holiday, and the injury histories of Henderson and Morant, it was easy to see how Shaedon would get plenty of opportunities off the bench, and potentially even some starts. The Blazers knew better than anyone how important guard depth is in the NBA after what happened to them last season.
And now, with still two months to go before the 2027 season kicks off, the Blazers’ guard depth is already strained.
Shaedon Sharpe is a frustrating and tantalizing player, one who has been hard for the Blazers to depend on.
But he and his forever-intertwined partner, Scoot Henderson, have never had a fair shot to grow alongside one another, and now it’s certain they never will.
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