Before they saw it in Brooklyn or Chapel Hill, where Roy Williams called Day’Ron Sharpe “one of the greatest rebounders I’ve ever coached,” they saw it in Greenville, NC.
“He probably was into fourth, fifth grade and he was a man-child on the boards,” said Trabian Barnes, who runs an AAU program back in Greenville. “He could rebound the basketball like no other kid we’d ever seen.”
It fits for a kid whose first love was football, embracing the most physical part of the game on the hardwood. It’s not just a physical skill; it’s central to how he approaches the game and sees himself in it.
“I’ve always been taught that if you want to score, go get an offensive rebound,” said Sharpe during his first week as a pro while at the NBA Summer League in August of 2021. “So if the ball’s not coming may way, you’ve gotta find some type of way to get points on the board — rebounds. I feel like rebounds are one of the most valuable things that a team always needs. You can never go wrong with offensive rebounding because every team wants extra possessions.”
It's about going and getting it, seizing what’s in front of you. As Sharpe heads into his second pro season, with his 21st birthday coming up two weeks after opening night, the landscape at Brooklyn’s center position looks far different than it did when he played in 32 games while shuttling back-and-forth with Long Island in the G League.
The Nets were carrying five centers when the 2021-22 season concluded. Sharpe and Nic Claxton are all that remains from that group. There are some variables: Nets head coach Steve Nash has said that newly acquired veteran forward Markieff Morris is a center in Brooklyn and there’s the question hanging of how often the Nets will roll with lineups featuring Ben Simmons as the nominal 5.
“I think Day’Ron is a guy who put in a lot of time this summer,” said Nash. “We worked him hard and he responded and got a lot better. The opportunity is there for him to earn minutes, but there certainly is some competition.”
“It’s noticeable, the changes in his body,” said Nets GM Sean Marks. “Obviously he’s maturing, he’s still young, but the work he’s put in, tweaking habits. Just spending the hours in the gym and weight room. That’s exciting. It’s really exciting for me to see and he’s going to have a heck of an opportunity this year.”
That summer work is right in Sharpe’s wheelhouse. Back in June, he was home in Greenville to host a basketball camp. It’s the region toward the eastern end of the state that gave the Nets one of their all-time greats, with Buck Williams coming out of Rocky Mount, 40 miles away.
In Greenville, Sharpe came of age in a no-frills, no-quarter-taken gym with a name that says it all: the Dungeon.
“A gym that can build character,” said coach Keith McLawhorn, who runs the Dungeon. “It’s not a pretty gym. It’s a hard-nosed gym where you’ve got to grind. You’ve got to put in a lot of work. Here we make our players uncomfortable. Day’Ron Sharpe was one of those players we made uncomfortable.”
“The Dungeon, I would say, is only for people that got that dog in them,” said Sharpe. “If you ain’t trying to really work don’t come to the Dungeon. Definitely during the summer. You ain’t going to last five minutes. As soon as you walk in there it’s probably about 110 degrees. We’re in there mid-summer, flipping tires, might have quit. I’m crying to my dad I don’t want to play basketball no more.”
When Sharpe’s father, Derrick, got his first look at the place, he saw the concrete floors and thought, what’s going on here? His mother, Michelle, shared those initial misgivings.
“I have all good things to say about the Dungeon,” said Michelle Sharpe. “I was very critical at first, I must say. ‘My son is not going there. His leg’s going to fall off.’ I was saying some crazy stuff. But there’s been some gems that came out of that gym and my son was one of them.”
Michelle and Derrick emphasized schoolwork and grades with Day’Ron and all their siblings and there were consequences for coming up short — basketball and video games went away for awhile. Day’Ron took to those standards and they applied to his basketball work as well, getting up at 5 a.m. to go to the gym. His sights were set high, visiting his local pastor while still in grammar school and asking him to pray for him to make the NBA.
Chris Cherry coached Sharpe at South Central HS and saw the raw talent, the work ethic, the basketball IQ, and the possibility of a very bright future.
“He’s going to be the first one in the gym, last one to leave,” said Cherry. “Tries to be first in every drill, tries to win every drill. Once you have that and you have a little bit of skill everything else flows naturally.”
“I loved it when I played for Coach Cherry,” said Sharpe. “He wasn’t the type of guy that would hold you back from the things you could do. He showed you you can do things, he’s going to let you do it.”
Even as his national profile rose — he committed to North Carolina as a high school sophomore — Sharpe was committed to his hometown teammates, staying at South Central through his junior year — where they won the state title that eluded them the previous two seasons — before moving on to the national powerhouse Montverde in Florida.
“I told my mom and them I was like, I’m not leaving South Central until I get a ring with South Central,” said Sharpe. “Because the guys I was playing with at South Central was the guys I grew up from six, seven years old playing basketball with. We all grew up together playing basketball. I told mom, when I get a ring we could talk about it.”
At Montverde, Sharpe played with fellow 2021 first-round picks Cade Cunningham, Scottie Barnes, and Moses Moody on a team that went 25-0 and finished No. 1 nationally. Sharpe was a McDonald’s All-American. Nets teammate Ben Simmons had played for Montverde previously and Kyrie Irving played for Montverde coach Kevin Boyle at St. Patrick’s in New Jersey.
As much as he loved North Carolina — Sharpe watched the Tar Heels in this year’s Final Four from the Nets’ team bus — he felt ready to make the leap to the NBA after one season. When he did, he didn’t expect Brooklyn to be his destination. But he got the call on draft night with the Nets on the clock at No. 27 and when the Nets took Cam Thomas, his agent stayed on the phone until the Phoenix Suns took Sharpe for Brooklyn as part of a trade at No. 29.
“He’s always stood out in terms of his personality, his energy, his effort level, and then his skill set,” said B.J. Johnson, Brooklyn’s Director of Player Evaluation. “Seeing him earlier on was very helpful so that way when our scouting group, we were having discussions about him, we had a chance to revisit some of those skills he had beforehand and also what he did at Carolina, put it all together.”
That meant it was time for Sharpe to go to work again.
“Twenty-eight guys went ahead of me and I feel like they shouldn’t have went ahead of me,” said Sharpe. “I feel like I’ve got a lot to prove.”
He was still just 19 years old when his rookie season tipped off last fall. In 15 games with Long Island in the G League, Sharpe averaged 18.6 points and 12.2 rebounds per game. While appearing in 32 games for Brooklyn, Sharpe shot 57.7 percent while averaging 6.2 points and 5.0 rebounds in 12.2 minutes per game. That extrapolated out to a per-36 rebounding rate of 14.7, one of the top 10 numbers in the league.
When significant opportunity did call, Sharpe came through. When the Nets were hit with COVID absences in mid-December, he received his first real playing time and turned in a pair of solid 13-minute efforts with 12 rebounds across the two games as a group of he and his fellow rookies teamed with Kevin Durant for wins over Toronto and Philadelphia.
“Those wins, we called those the Stay Ready wins,” said Sharpe, looking back enthusiastically during a conversation on the Voice of the Nets podcast with Chris Carrino over the summer. “That’s what we called them. We go in the locker room, ‘Stay Ready group on three, 1, 2, 3, Stay Ready.’ Everybody that played those games we always played in Stay Ready so everybody got taken out and we had to step up.”
Sharpe was ready again a month later, busting out with 14 points on 6-of-6 shooting and seven rebounds in Portland then putting up 20 points on 10-of-14 shooting in a rout of Chicago. Two games later he had his first career double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds against the Pelicans.
“He’s got some natural gifts,” sad Nash before the New Orleans game. “He has a nose for the ball around the basket and on the boards. He’s physical, he loves to throw his weight around underneath the basket, which is a positive for us. So that rebounding, physicality, he has great hands, he has a real knack for finishing around the basket as well. For a young player, he’s an excellent passer for a center. So a lot of skills we can use and a great piece for our team to develop.”
As his second pro season approaches, Sharpe is aiming to make those moments routine.
“Riding the bench is not fun,” said Sharpe. “Going from the G back to the NBA, playing two games in the G League, then coming back playing games with Brooklyn back to back days is not fun. I’m trying to make sure I can put myself in the right place to thrive.”