Brooklyn’s Next Nets: What is Day’Ron Sharpe worth?

Day’Ron Sharpe’s restricted free agency is seen as something of a formality, given Brooklyn’s cap situation. But you know what? He’s actually pretty good.

The Indiana Pacers won 50 games this season, and now seem poised to advance to the second round of the NBA Playoffs. They are a very good team, just shy of greatness, in part because a phenomenal record in the clutch this season papers over a lack of true, 50-win dominance.

Still, 50 wins is 50 wins. Per Cleaning the Glass, which filters out garbage time, Indiana had a +2.3 net rating this season, which is exactly what the Brooklyn Nets have posted with Day’Ron Sharpe on the court in each of the past two seasons.

Granted, there’s still some noise. Sharpe has played just 1828 total minutes since the start of 2023-24, and given how bad Brooklyn has been on the whole, there’s a nice chunk of garbage time in there. Over that span, opponents are shooting nearly 5% worse from three when he’s on the court, some good luck that Ty Sullivan of CAA Sports will deny as such this summer.

But Sullivan, his agent, needn’t fret. Day’Ron Sharpe has proven himself a valuable NBA player, and there are nights where he reaches for something more.

Though his rookie contract has expired, he’ll likely be back in Brooklyn next season, given the team’s abundance of cap space and ability to be patient with their assets. They’re a long way away. Plus, Sharpe wants to be here: “God willing,” as he put it in his exit interview.

Why wouldn’t he feel that way? 18 months ago, Sharpe wasn’t guaranteed to get a second contract. Other than offensive rebounding, he didn’t have an NBA-ready skill. But in 2024, Jacque Vaughn took a leap of faith by putting Sharpe in the rotation, and in 2025, Jordi Fernández found defensive coverages Sharpe can thrive in.

This season, the 23-year-old was not just playable, but a positive defensively. In an aggressive scheme slanted to force turnovers, Sharpe showed off serious mobility and hand-eye coordination. In his season debut (after missing six weeks with a left hamstring strain) he made this play…

When Brooklyn’s aggressive hedges would turn into switches, Sharpe had the juice to keep up with, and occasionally stonewall some of the NBA’s shiftiest guards. Amen Thompson’s lack of a reliable jumper means defenders can give him a cushion, but rookie and sophomore Day’Ron Sharpe could not move his feet like this…

However, what kept rookie and sophomore Sharpe off the court — aside from decent LaMarcus Aldridge and Andre Drummond minutes — was not so much a lack of mobility, but a wobbly interior presence.

Despite standing at 6’9”, he played a traditional center role early on. The native Carolinan played drop coverage almost exclusively over his first two seasons, and struggled mightily; he had a sky-high foul rate due to poor technique, and didn’t have the vertical pop required to block many shots.

Now, he might be best playing “up the floor,” as Fernández terms it, but he has made astounding strides doing traditional big man stuff. Here he is breaking up alley-oops, timing blocks from opposite block, and meeting drivers head-on…

To me, it’s not the seven points / 100 possessions Brooklyn’s defense improved with Sharpe on the floor — he mostly got to play against far less talented bench units, rather than starters, and the opponent 3-point shooting variance is too weird to ignore.

Here, instead, are your juicy numbers. Per Basketball Reference, Sharpe stole the ball on 2.3% of opponent possessions this season, and blocked 4.6% of possible shots. Because he only played 907 minutes, he didn’t qualify for end-of-season leaderboards, but if he had, each mark would have ranked 13th in the NBA. Of all players with at least 820 minutes — ten ticks a night — only Jonathan Isaac also recorded a 2.0 steal pct and 4.0 block pct.

Sharpe’s conditioning has improved greatly — see: his 30-minute domination of the Oklahoma City Thunder — but he still benefits from playing just 18 minutes a night, inflating his rate-stats thanks to short stints.

That may lead to fair questions about his viability as a long-term starter. He probably won’t be as impactful of a defender playing 32 minutes a night, but before penciling him in as a career backup, consider that this is a solid, two-season trend-line. Even asking these questions represents a huge win for Sharpe, given his first two seasons.

In 2025, Day’Ron (with help from Fernández) may have revealed defensive future in the NBA, an active big man best suited to play in turnover-hungry schemes, though capable of eating some traditional innings. The UNC product is not Rudy Gobert in the restricted area, but he is no slouch, and was a destructive force for a Brooklyn Nets defense whose singular goal was to be destructive.

All that said, he was most destructive on the offensive glass. What else is new?

As evidenced, Sharpe is not just a great offensive rebounder. He is a special one, statistically one of the greatest ever now 192 games into his career. When he says, “I’m just a beast on the boards, I don’t really think nobody can mess with me in the paint,” it’s not unfounded braggadocio.

However you value that skill will determine how you value Sharpe; luckily for him, the pendulum is swinging his way.

In 2020, only one NBA team rebounded 30% of their own misses; the average team snatched under 27% of available o-boards. Five years later, a whopping 14 teams cracked 30%, and only five teams were sub-27%.

It’s easy to see why. Not only do offensive rebounds constitute extra possessions, but they are often better ones too. Per PBP Stats, the average “first-chance” possession was worth about one point per possession (PPP) across the NBA this season. The average second-chance possession was worth 1.22 PPP, an offensive rating better than any team has ever accomplished.

The offensive rebounding means Sharpe will have a place in any rotation in the league. It solidifies a floor. But yet to sign a second contract, we need to ask what a realistic ceiling looks like.

It’s probably time to give up on the idea that he’ll become a positive finisher. Though his touch on floaters and hooks has gotten better, he still shot just 62% at the rim this season per CTG, right in line with career averages. That places him in the 16th percentile among “bigs”, right behind noted oafs Jock Landale and Drew Eubanks…

It’s hard to see where improvement is gonna come from. Though he’s in much better shape at 23 than 20, he’s still 6’9” with a slightly above average wingspan and mediocre leaping ability. The safest bet is he converts some of his more ill-advised attempts into push shots and floaters, where he’s shown real touch, but he’s never going to be a real downhill threat.

Speaking of touch, it was nice to see Sharpe shoot 76% from the line after hovering in the low-60s over his first three years. The improvement did not feel unsustainable. Conversely, I don’t feel much need to address his 11-of-45 season from deep. He’s not gonna be an actual floor-spacer, and that’s fine.

Jordi Fernández’s system was close to the best use of Sharpe’s skillset this season. He got his first taste of real dribble-handoff responsibility, and made some nice 4-on-3 reads, hit some cutters, took some fake-handoffs to the rim, and occasionally flashed some nice screening ability…

It wasn’t always perfect, but even many of the mistakes were encouraging. He’d recognize the opportunity for a slip-cut to the basket, but telegraph it and commit a turnover, that type of thing.

Well, I think that about covers it.

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Keith Smith of Spotrac predicts a three-year, $30 million deal for Sharpe to come home in restricted free agency this offseason: “The Nets can’t just let him walk, but bigs don’t generally get paid as much as scoring wings/guards do. And Brooklyn already has Nic Claxton and Noah Clowney under contract too. That’ll push Sharpe’s deal down a bit, but he should still get a nice payday.”

Restricted free agency can be finicky, especially this offseason, where Brooklyn controls all the cap space and will thus be linked to everybody. Seriously. Get ready for the churn of the rumor mill.

Anyway, Grant Williams hit RFA in 2023, Obi Toppin hit RFA in 2024. Williams is now making $13.5 million a year, Toppin $15 million a year. Those aren’t perfect comparisons, but if the Nets can pay Sharpe less than those guys, they’ll do it.

They should do it. There are plenty of reasons for the Nets to re-sign Day’Ron Sharpe this summer: the cap space, the ability to trade him in the future, limiting roster turnover while trying to build a culture.

But most of all, Day’Ron Sharpe has turned into a pretty good player.