Shaedon Sharpe's Leap Forcing Uncomfortable Jrue Holiday Conversation for Blazers

Portland Trail Blazers guard Shaedon Sharpe is making one of the greater fourth-year leaps of anyone from the 2022 NBA Draft class. While Paolo Banchero, Chet Holmgren, and Jalen Williams have already arrived, Sharpe may be poised to join them at some point.

While that may seem exaggerated, the truth is Sharpe has developed into a star in the month of December. His 23/4/3 counting stats split was a per-game average held by Glen Rice during his best days with the Charlotte Hornets in the late 1990s, Ray Allen with the Seattle Supersonics in the aughts, and Michael Redd with the Milwaukee Bucks during the same time period.

In his most recent outing during a 134-133 overtime win against the Sacramento Kings, Sharpe scored 26 points on 11/22 shooting overall and a 4/6 clip from beyond the arc.

Sharpe has emerged as a high-volume offensive threat for the Blazers alongside Deni Avdija and Jerami Grant in a high-octane offense averaging 130 points per game in its last three outings, even with key players missing.

One of those injured players may have lost his spot in the starting lineup because of how effective Sharpe has become.

Shaedon Sharpe May Have Made Jrue Holiday a Reserve

Sharpe's best career trajectory would be developing into a well-rounded guard who can create for himself and others like Jrue Holiday did in his fourth season in the league back in 2012-23. The irony is that he'll probably have to steal some of Holiday's minutes to do that.

Portland will have to reckon with its highest-paid player in a secondary role, but it's something they expected when trading for a 35-year-old coming off his worst campaign since his rookie year. Holiday is the ultimate professional. At this stage, guys like Sharpe and Scoot Henderson, the latter of whom remains out and hasn't debuted in 2025-26, developing is more important to the team than Holiday accumulating regular-season stats.

Still, competitive players taking a backseat after being surpassed by someone a generation younger is a tough pill to swallow for said competitive players. There's no telling how Holiday takes moving to a bench role for the first time in 10 years. Just because someone is expected to act a certain way doesn't mean that he will.

Sharpe has created a good problem, since it'd be worse needing to rely on Holiday, but one that'll require intensive care regardless to make sure the transition goes smoothly.