Blazers Coach Chauncey Billups Reflects on Shaedon Sharpe Turnovers

Portland Trail Blazers guard Shaedon Sharpe played 38 minutes and scored 17 points in his team’s 107-98 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday night. The real eye-opening stat for the young win was 10 turnovers committed, 60% of his team’s total for the evening.

Sharpe’s turnovers were a hot topic of discussion following the loss. Trail Blazers Head Coach Chauncey Billups took the microphone after the game and, when asked by media members, shared his thoughts on Sharpe’s performance. Here are the video and a transcript of his comments about Sharpe.

On Shaedon Sharpe’s 10-turnover night:

I’ve been there. I can remember as a rookie having 9 turnovers at the Garden. I remember it. So for me, it’s one of those tough things when you’re developing. Sometimes it’s painful. But then you’ve got to learn from it. You’ve got to take and learn from it. That’s the beauty of it, or if you don’t learn from it and keep doing it, that’s when it gets really tough.

This is a part of it for him. We’re asking him to do so much: bring it up, make the play, shoot on the kick-outs, get to the basket, make the next...maybe I’m asking too much of him right now. And he’s not a natural play-maker yet. So we’re asking him to do that too. And then he’s playing against some good defenders out there and he’s seeing different coverages and stuff.

We’re going to watch it. We’re going to talk about it. There was some that I’ll excuse and there were some that were lackadaisical that I just can’t accept. And he knows that. So we’ll talk about it.

On finding the right balance versus stress and development on Sharpe:

I don’t have a choice right now. When my roster is full, I don’t have to put too much on him. As you’ve seen, he was coming off the bench at the start of the season. So right now, I’ve got no options. So there is no weighing anything. It’s just get out there and see what happens.

Billups also talked about other aspects of the game and roster, including praising reserve forward Toumani Camara.

The Blazers face the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday at 6:00 PM, Pacific. We’ll have the injury report for you when it comes out this evening.