No topic is hotter in Portland Trail Blazers circles in the Fall of 2025 than the play of shooting guard Shaedon Sharpe. Once a promising and athletic prospect, Sharpe appears to be developing into a front-line scorer, the potential first option the Blazers have been waiting for since the prime days of Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum faded into rebuild territory.
Sharpe is also in the fourth year of his rookie-scale contract. If the Blazers don’t reach an extension agreement with Sharpe before next summer, he’ll enter restricted free agency.
Given the situation, plenty of sports media figures have been guessing at the amount of the agreement Portland and their star-in-waiting should settle on, should they sign an extension this fall. Speculation ranges from about $23 million per year over four years upwards towards the theoretical maximum.
In the midst of the flurry, I have another question. What if there wasn’t a deal at all?
It’s possible the best move the Blazers could make with Sharpe is to not sign him early, making the requisite qualifying offer next summer and letting him hit free agency. This could make sense for a couple reasons.
First, this “new” Shaedon Sharpe has played exactly zero regular-season games. He had a good training camp. He’s looked good in preseason. These are not exactly conclusive standards. Sharpe has vacillated before. Right now the Blazers are still buying in on hope more than track record.
Granted, Portland has great incentive to buy into that hope; it’s literally what they’ve been waiting for since they drafted Sharpe 7th overall in 2022. But betting on his development is different than doubling down on the wager early, while the wheel is still in spin. Hopefully Sharpe excels, fulfilling every promise this season. If not, that certainly affects his future contract value.
The classic argument for a preemptive extension is the story going the other way. If Sharpe does well this year, his value goes up. (I imagine this has been discussed among his advisors, by the way. If the baseline deal for him is just $23 million per season–less than the Blazers offered Anfernee Simons four years ago in a completely different market–Sharpe may want to take a year and bet on himself.) The nightmare scenario for Portland is Sharpe becoming a star, then signing elsewhere.
Is that realistic, though? Maybe not.
Sharpe is entering _restricted_ free agency. That means the Blazers will have the right to match any salary offer an opposing team makes next summer.
There is a loophole. Sharpe would have the option to sign Portland’s one-year, $11 million qualifying offer, play in Portland for a year, and then become an unrestricted free agent in the Summer of 2027, able to go wherever he pleases.
Neither that possibility nor the restricted free agency marketplace should scare Portland too much, probably. There simply isn’t enough money on the table from enough sources to provide a credible threat.
The projected NBA salary cap for 2026 stands at $166 million. The landscape will change, but right now, as it stands for the Summer of 2026, the team with the lowest cap obligation is the Brooklyn Nets at $159.8 million owed to their current players. That includes cap holds which they can shed. They could potentially clear up to $40 million of cap space. They’re not alone. The Utah Jazz could theoretically create $60 million or so, Chicago $80 million. But that trio stands among a small handful of teams that can clear real space
Let’s say the Jazz, Nets, or Bulls were willing to forego their own players to create space to sign free agents from other teams. The 2026 free agent list could include:
* Trae Young
* Anfernee Simons
* Cam Thomas
* Lonzo Ball
* D’Angelo Russell
* Draymond Green
* Jonathan Kuminga
* Kevin Durant
* Benedict Mathurin (RFA)
* James Harden
* Bradley Beale
* LeBron James
* Austin Reaves
* Norman Powell
* Luguentz Dort
* Zach LaVine
* Walker Kessler (RFA)
Not all of those players will be available. Some wouldn’t sign with certain teams. But even after culling those out, you’re probably left with a dozen players around the same general interest level as Sharpe. What are the odds that one of a limited number of teams with real cap space will…
1. Rank Sharpe above all other free agents on that list.
2. Commit to using a mammoth chunk–or all–of their available space on Sharpe.
3. Do so knowing the Blazers have the right to match the offer, potentially leaving them empty-handed?
The odds of Portland getting burned in this equation seem pretty small. What’s the tangible risk in waiting until his normal negotiation period arrives, gathering one more year of data, and then paying him what the market will bear?
If the Blazers get a sweetheart deal–four years, $90 million probably qualifies in this salary cap environment–they should pull the trigger now. They’re not going to pay Sharpe much less than that no matter what. But their negotiations on an early extension should start in the basement and not progress much beyond the main floor.
If the figure starts heading to the upper levels, let alone the penthouse, it’d behoove the Blazers to wait. One of two things will happen. Either Sharpe won’t blossom (or at least not yet) and won’t receive serious free agent consideration. At that point the Blazers can sign him to a modest contract next summer. Or Sharpe will excel, a bigger contract will be justified, and the Blazers can either offer him one outright or match what another team gives him…if another team even bothers. Either way, Portland doesn’t lose anything by waiting a year to ink that higher contract.
The only other road out of that intersection is the one-year-qualifying offer loophole mentioned above. If Sharpe played really well and a team placed a four-year, $160 million offer on the table next summer, is there any chance he risks playing a single year at $11 million instead, with no guaranteed future contract after? How much more is he going to earn? What if his play drops or, God forbid, he gets injured before he gets to that next deal?
Unless Sharpe is willing to play “chicken” with the qualifying offer, there’s no reason for Portland to offer him big money right now. Unless the Blazers offer a decent–maybe above-market–contract, there’s no reason for Sharpe to sign a lowball offer right now. If the two sides don’t reach an agreement this fall, it may not mean things are falling apart between them. It just makes sense for everyone to wait: Sharpe until he’s justified the biggest offer possible, the Blazers for the market to establish exactly what that is.
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