The Raptors Signed a 7-Foot-5 Center Who Averaged Four Blocks a Game in the G League
Toronto signed 7-foot-5 center Jamarion Sharp on Monday and waived guard Chucky Hepburn in the corresponding move.
Sharp is 25, undrafted, and the reigning G League Defensive Player of the Year. He is also one of the tallest players to appear on an NBA roster in years.
The Numbers Behind the Height
Across 39 games with the Texas Legends, Dallas’s G League affiliate, Sharp averaged 7.7 points, 7.5 rebounds and 4.1 blocks.
Four blocks a game is the number that gets a player signed. For context, no NBA player has averaged four blocks over a full season since Marcus Camby in 2007-08, and the G League is a higher-possession, more three-point-heavy environment than the NBA, which makes rim protection harder to accumulate rather than easier.
His college path was unconventional: John A. Logan College, then Western Kentucky, then Ole Miss, followed by two seasons with the Legends.
Why Toronto Is Looking
Hepburn was hurt, dealing with a hamstring injury suffered in Toronto’s Saturday win in Vancouver. He attended Monday’s practice without participating. Trey Jemison III was also injured in that game.
The Raptors are carrying a center rotation that Darko Rajakovic has publicly described as unsettled. He called the pairing of Jakob Poeltl and Collin Murray-Boyles “a work in progress,” and Murray-Boyles, who is projected to start at center, has averaged 9.5 points and 9.0 rebounds on 36.8 percent shooting through two preseason games with nine turnovers against the Clippers.
A 7-foot-5 shot-blocker is a specific solution to a specific problem, even if he never becomes a rotation player.
He Is Competing for a Two-Way Spot
Sharp is signing to compete for a two-way contract, and the clock on that is short. October 19 is the last day teams can convert an Exhibit 10 into a two-way deal, and it is also the hard roster cutdown to 15 standard contracts and three two-ways.
Toronto has already converted one Exhibit 10 this cycle, guard Malachi Smith, who was reported as the only such conversion in the league at the time.
Sharp’s exact contract type and Toronto’s precise roster count were not specified in the announcement.
The Realistic Expectation
Players this tall almost never work in the modern NBA. The league has spent 15 years building offenses specifically designed to punish slow-footed centers by dragging them to the perimeter, and a 7-foot-5 frame is not built for closeouts.
What a player like Sharp can do is change a handful of possessions a night as a deterrent, in short bursts, against second units. That is a real job. It is also a job that typically lives in the G League with occasional call-ups.
Toronto gets to find out for free. That is the whole appeal of a mid-October signing.
The Raptors open the regular season October 21 against Chicago.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
