Trail Blazers rookie, ex-Arizona prep star Shaedon Sharpe impresses Suns coach, Devin Booker

The Portland Trail Blazers are starting to look justified that they drafted Shaedon Sharpe, the mystery lottery pick who many in the media questioned this past summer.

A former standout at local prep basketball powerhouse Glendale Dream City Christian, Sharpe has shown positive production signs early this season. He returns to the Phoenix area for back-to-back Suns and Trail Blazers matchups on Friday and Saturday.

Damian Lillard called him "special" on Twitter last Friday. His coach and former NBA All-Star Chauncey Billups said on Tuesday that Sharpe is a combination of Portland's former franchise star Brandon Roy with Vince Carter-like dunks.

Before the West's first-place Suns (6-1) host the second-place Trail Blazers (5-2), Phoenix coach Monty Williams and Devin Booker told reporters after Thursday's practice they've been impressed with the 6-foot-6 Sharpe's production.

“I didn’t know much about him until my son started telling me about him because of high school stuff," Williams said. "Then you start looking at his ability to cover so much ground for an athlete, but then the first game of the year I think he had three 3s. I didn’t know he could shoot like that.

"He must have had a really good camp for Chauncey to trust a rookie in that role because they have guys on their bench that have played NBA games.”

Related: 3 questions entering Suns-Blazers rematch 

The back-to-back matchups will be the second time and third time facing each other within their past six games. Portland won their first meeting at home in an overtime thriller by two points, in which Sharpe played just 12 minutes and didn't score on his two field goal attempts.

Before Sharpe's two-point performance in Portland's home loss to Memphis on Wednesday, he averaged 9.3 points and shot 50% in 18.5 minutes through their first six games. His production earned him two consecutive starts in the backcourt with their second-best player Anfernee Simons, who replaced the injured Lillard (calf).

But Williams has recognized Sharpe’s athleticism, his balance to stay in front of the ball on defense and playmaking ability through his timing for cutting to the hole, creating space and ball movement when his teammates are open.

“He’s a good player. They found a really good long, athletic prototype wing that fits his style to play in the NBA,” Williams added.

Sharpe, 19, was the draft's seventh overall pick in June. Over the past two years, he's gone from being a Canadian five-star recruit in his native Ontario, transferred for his junior and senior seasons to Dream City Christian, graduated early last season and joined Kentucky in January.

Sharpe added more to his mystery from his Las Vegas Summer League debut. He scored just two points then suffered a shoulder injury within the game's first few minutes against the Detroit Pistons, and was ruled out for the remainder of the summer.

Booker said that he always hopes the best for his fellow ex-Kentucky players and all younger players in the league. He admitted that he didn’t keep track of Sharpe during last season, and doesn’t watch as much college basketball as he used to.

But Booker couldn’t have tracked his progress if he had wanted to when Sharpe was a Wildcat.

After Sharpe joined Kentucky during the college basketball season’s midpoint, its longtime coach John Calipari never played him and Sharpe declared for the draft in April.

Sharpe's pre-draft scouting report was based on his high school highlights and statistics, which were 23.7 points, 6.8 rebounds, 2.8 steals and 1.8 blocks per game.

"Shaedon will continue to show why he really was the steal of the draft and will continue to improve," Dream City Christian boys basketball coach Kyle Weaver said in a text message to The Republic. "I saw him mature and grow like no other player I’ve ever coached. ...

"Everything he does is at his own pace and footwork is top tier. Once he gets more comfortable his game is going to expand even more."

Williams also acknowledged how Sharpe parallels Roy's pace, height and shooting guard position of Roy.

Before Roy's sudden retirement in 2011 in his prime due to a degenerative knee condition, he was a three-time All-Star who averaged 18.8 points, shot 46%, 4.3 rebounds, and 4.7 assists. He played from 2005 to 2011 in Portland, and he made a brief comeback with the Minnesota Timberwolves during the 2012-13 season.

Williams began his coaching career as an assistant in Portland from 2005 through Roy's first four years on the team.

“I haven’t watched him enough to stay that, but Chauncey’s a good study,” Williams said about Billups' Roy-Sharpe comparison. “He’s probably seen him every day. The pace, for a young guy, that’s the one thing I notice with him. You can’t speed him up. That’s what I saw with Brandon.

"I coached Brandon his rookie year in summer league and that was the first thing I noticed was no matter what the game or the speed of the game was doing, he could stay at his pace. You see a little bit of that with Shaedon.”

Sharpe showed flashes of promise during the preseason in which he averaged 11.8 points in 21 minutes. He had a high of 27 points (10-of-13 FG) in the Trail Blazers' win over Israel National League team Maccabi Ra'anana and a 17-point loss against the Golden State Warriors.

His 7-of-12 shooting including three monster dunks (two on back-to-back plays) in Portland's home win over Houston last Friday was his best regular season performance thus far.

"Just seeing what he’s able to do, seeing the team rally behind him and allowing him to play through mistakes, just throwing him out there in the fire is always good for development, and similar to Simons you can just see the confidence on him," Booker said. "That’s a big thing as a young player in the league."

Have tips for us? Reach the reporter at dana.scott@azcentral.com or at 480-486-4721. Follow his Twitter @iam_DanaScott.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Trail Blazers rookie Shaedon Sharpe impresses Suns' Williams, Booker