There’s a problem brewing for the Blazers’ two most important players

The Portland Trail Blazers view Shaedon Sharpe as a future All-Star level player for good reason. He’s coming off an encouraging third season, ranking second on the team in scoring at 17.0 points per game despite being just 21 years old. While scoring is his calling card, Sharpe contributes in other aspects as well with his athleticism, rebounding and underrated style of play. But if there’s one area where he can improve offensively, it’s three-point shooting.

Shaedon Sharpe’s three-point shooting is a hurdle on the way to his All-Star ceiling

Since entering the league in 2022, Sharpe’s three-point shooting has trended in the wrong direction. He shot a promising 36.0 percent as a rookie, but that dropped to 33.3 last season and 28.2 this year.

There remains a chance that Sharpe is closer to a league-average three-point shooter, as his 2022-23 stats suggest. He played 80 games this year and has had a smaller sample size over the past two seasons after playing in just 32 games in the 2023-24 season due to a core muscle injury.

But Sharpe has shot just 25.4 percent from distance in Portland’s last 10 games. The Blazers desperately need an All-Star on their roster if they ever want to make the leap to being a team that can accelerate their rebuild. Sharpe is the best bet to get there at some point, but hitting that ceiling will be much harder if he can’t become a consistent three-point threat.

The Blazers spent their top ten picks on three players over the past three summers – Sharpe, Scoot Henderson and Donovan Clingan. There is talk that Clingan will eventually become a Brook Lopez-type player, an elite rim protector who can also give everything on offense. To his credit, Clingan has shot a respectable 3 out of 10 from three players this season. However, like Lopez, he may not fully develop this aspect of his game until later in his career.

With Clingan seemingly established as the Blazers’ future starter, their backcourt needs to consist of at least average three-point shooters. The average three-point percentage is 35.2 for point guards and 36.8 for shooting guards. The guard most likely to miss these metrics is the one in whom the Blazers invested their highest draft capital.

The Blazers’ future backcourt faces spatial challenges with Sharpe and Henderson

This year, Henderson is shooting better from distance than Sharpe, but is still hitting at a rate of just 28.8 percent. Even as a rookie, Scoot wasn’t much better with a shooting percentage of 32.5 percent. The eye test and the fact that Sharpe has shot better in the past shows that Sharpe is more likely to improve his percentage as the season progresses.

Three-point shooting has been a glaring problem for the Blazers since Damian Lillard was traded to Milwaukee. Last season they finished last with 34.4 percent. This year they are the sixth worst at 33.5 percent.

This problem could persist during the Blazers’ rebuild if Henderson and Sharpe don’t get closer to the league’s position average. This is particularly concerning in the modern NBA, as the last four champions all finished in the top five in three-point percentage.