Nic Claxton is gone<\/a>, leaving Sharpe and Moritz Wagner competing to start at center. Sharpe averaged 18.7 minutes across 62 games last season, including seven starts. Through five NBA seasons, he\u2019s started just 21 of 253 games and played 30 or more minutes only five times.<\/p>\nThe chance to start comes with a demand Sharpe has rarely faced. The effort that\u2019s made him valuable in short stretches will have to last.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a challenge because the minutes are going to go up,\u201d head coach Jordi Fern\u00e1ndez said. \u201cBut also at the same time, I want them to fight for a starting spot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fern\u00e1ndez said neither Sharpe nor Wagner is accustomed to playing starter\u2019s minutes. Different players could start or finish on different nights. Sharpe will have to earn Claxton\u2019s old job, but Brooklyn is giving him his best chance yet to show he can handle it.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old\u2019s case begins with how quickly he can make a game more physical. Wagner understood that long before they became teammates.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I played against him, I would be so mad when he gets into the game because I knew I would struggle on the boards and it would be such a high-effort game to kind of, I don\u2019t know, hold my own down there,\u201d Wagner said.<\/p>\n
Sharpe\u2019s best skill addresses one of Brooklyn\u2019s clearest weaknesses. The Nets finished last in the NBA in rebounding last season at 39.3 per game. Sharpe averaged 5.3 offensive rebounds per 36 minutes, fifth in the league. His production has been consistent, too. Over the past three seasons, he\u2019s been one of only five players to log at least 750 minutes while averaging at least 15 points and 12 rebounds per 36 each year.<\/p>\n
Entering his sixth season, Sharpe is one of the roster\u2019s longer-tenured players, far removed from being one of its youngest bigs searching for a few minutes. At Media Day, he said he wasn\u2019t stressing over whether he starts or comes off the bench. He wants to play hard, produce and help win whenever Fern\u00e1ndez calls him.<\/p>\n
The Nets have also been better with him on the floor. Over the past three seasons, Brooklyn has outscored opponents by 0.4 points per 100 possessions with Sharpe playing and been outscored by 9.0 per 100 with him off. Most of his minutes, though, have come against reserves.<\/p>\n
A larger role would put more of those minutes against starting centers. It would also leave fewer chances to spend every ounce of energy at once. Staying effective deeper into games will require Sharpe to manage his fouls, his pace and his recovery without losing the force that makes him the player he is.<\/p>\n
Some of his instincts may need refinement.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd even just double the minutes, learn how to pace myself during the game, learning what opportunities to take \u2026 saving myself for later on in the game,\u201d Sharpe said. \u201cBut I just don\u2019t play hard until the wheels fall off, so I can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sharpe averaged 4.6 fouls per 36 minutes last season. When asked this week about keeping himself available for longer stretches, he identified moving screens as the source of most of his fouls. He expressed confidence in his ability to defend on the ball, away from it and at the rim.<\/p>\n
Conditioning, he insists, isn\u2019t the concern. Sharpe said he\u2019s climbed on the treadmill after games for the past four or five years. His focus now is on handling the load, improving his mobility and learning how his body recovers as the work accumulates.<\/p>\n
Camp has already offered a small reminder of that distinction. After two demanding days and a shooting session, Sharpe said his legs felt \u201ckind of dead\u201d once he sat down. He welcomed a recovery day before the next heavy practice. In his telling, the adjustment is learning how his body responds when one hard stint leads into another.<\/p>\n
Sharpe\u2019s longer appearances offer encouragement. In the 18 games last season when he played at least 20 minutes, he averaged 10.9 points, 8.7 rebounds and 2.9 assists in 24.6 minutes while shooting 61.1% from the field.<\/p>\n
Two of his five career 30-minute games also came last season. He finished with 17 points, six rebounds, four assists and three steals in 32 minutes against the Denver Nuggets. Against the Indiana Pacers, he had 19 points, 12 rebounds, five assists, two steals and two blocks in 31 minutes.<\/p>\n
Those games provide a glimpse of what he can do with more time. The sample remains small because the opportunity has been small.<\/p>\n
Fern\u00e1ndez said Sharpe had \u201can amazing summer\u201d and \u201clooks great.\u201d The next step is sustaining that work through the heavier demands of a season.<\/p>\n
His approach remains simple.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, when the whistle starts, when the game starts and it\u2019s time to play, I\u2019m playing,\u201d Sharpe said. \u201cWhen the game is over, the game is over. That\u2019s how I look at it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Day\u2019Ron Sharpe measures playing time in stints, not minutes. For most of his NBA career, those stints have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":848916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3767],"tags":[7,670,247,3803,2299,6,29242,671],"class_list":["post-848915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn-nets","tag-basketball","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-nets","tag-brooklynnets","tag-dayron-sharpe","tag-nba","tag-nba-training-camp","tag-nets"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117369581276759694","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}