The Portland Trail Blazers acquired veterans Jrue Holiday and Damian Lillard this summer.
However, the core players for the new season are mainly made up of young players, and Lillard in particular is likely to miss the season due to injury.
In the final preseason game against the Golden State Warriors, three of the Blazers’ starters were under the age of 25.
Among them was Shaydon Sharp, who scored 18 points in a 118-111 loss to Golden State.
After that game, head coach Chauncey Billups made it clear that he had given the 22-year-old guard an important task.
Rather than focus on Sharpe’s offense, which is his specialty, Billups assigned him to play defense with Brandin Podzemski, Stephen Curry and Buddy Hield.
“You see a high level of focus. I thought he was good tonight and solid defensively. That’s why we’re going to continue to challenge him with who we use,” Billups explained.
“When the game started, I put Jrue Holiday on Will Richard. As opposed to what you would think of putting Jrue on all the top players, I wanted to challenge Shedon, so I put him on Poziemski early on and a little bit on Steph.”
“He had some tough coverage on Buddy, but he stayed focused and I’m proud of that. Just keep having more and more confidence in them and keep putting them in different tough spots,” he added.
Sharp performed admirably in those missions. Curry still scored 28 points, but Sharpe had a key steal in defending the two-time MVP.
What’s even more impressive is that Sharp held Poziemski to just four points and Heal to just eight points, even though both players played over 20 minutes.
Overall, Sharp had three steals in the game, each coming against one of three Warriors players.
His defensive performance demonstrated Billups’ confidence in giving him a difficult assignment.
If Sharp can consistently display these two-way abilities during the regular season, he could emerge as one of the hottest young players in the NBA.