Sharpe’s Unfortunate Injury Might Be The Door That Finally Opens For Giles

Paul Kitagaki Jr. pkitagaki@sacbee.com

A heartwarming sidenote in a downward spiraling Nets season has been the comeback of big man Harry Giles III from major knee injuries. Prior to Brooklyn’s latest disturbing defeat to Portland on Sunday, Head Coach Jacque Vaughn announced that Giles, who had previously been out of the league for nearly three years, and forward Trendon Watford had their veteran minimum contracts fully guaranteed for the season.

For Giles, 25, it was the culmination of many arduous hours of rehabilitation from multiple knee surgeries. Once considered one of the top high school players in the country and a top recruit at Duke before being selected No. 20 overall in the 2017 NBA Draft, he had been reduced to simply searching for another opportunity through private workouts this past offseason.

Brooklyn ended up being the right fit for Giles and though by my recollection he has yet to play a minute outside of garbage time in any of his 10 appearances this season, he has been by all accounts an exemplary teammate. He may not be the dancer that former Net (and Giles’ one-time high school teammate) Theo Pinson was, but the YES Network cameras have often caught Giles on his feet giving encouragement and exhortations on the sideline. You could tell by the love the Sacramento fans showered him with when Brooklyn visited Giles’ old stomping grounds on December 11 that it wasn’t just because he averaged about seven points per game over the 104 games he played there. It was earned through his perseverance. That he’s so ingrained in the fabric of that city might be why he is still listed as a King on the NBA.com’s website.

However, Giles seems like he now wants to make a new mark in Brooklyn and is itching for Vauighn to give him the signal. On a per-36 minute basis, he’s been averaging 25 points and 10 rebounds, and you could see glimpses of his offensive skillset and smooth shooting stroke when he received court time. But that of course was in a very small sample size against lower level NBA competition.

With Nets backup center Day’Ron Sharpe convalescing at home nursing a knee sprain from an ugly landing during the Portland loss while the Nets embarked on their trip to Paris for Thursday’s contest versus Cleveland (Vaughn didn’t rule out the possibility that he will join the team later this week, pending the results of an MRI), will this be Giles’ door opening? With Vaughn, you can never tell. He’s prone to contradiction, like when he said of Giles following an eight-point effort in a December 8 rout over Washington, “Harry hasn’t played because we have Day’Ron and Nic (Claxton). Besides that, Harry would play. He’s good enough to be in the game.”

Really? If that were true, why wasn’t Giles used during any of the meaningful minutes over the 10 games Claxton has missed this season? Vaughn went to extraordinarily lengths to fill those minutes with undersized wings like Dorian Finney-Smith and Royce O’Neale at the 5.

Look, I’m not ready to assert that Giles is deserving of a regular rotation role in Sharpe’s absence—he plays at a lean 6-foot 10 and 240 pounds and has never been highly-regarded as a defensive presence. Who knows where his basketball conditioning is, since the last time he ran for longer than the 15 minutes he got during the December 14 blowout loss in Denver was back in April 2021?

I do know, though, that this team needs a spark, because the flame from Friday’s win over the Thunder was doused a mere two days later. Could it come from a new source who plays with joy like Giles? What do the Nets have to lose by giving it a shot? Heck, even Pinson once won the Nets a game against the Knicks in 2019.  

I’m also going to assume that Giles isn’t a “just happy to be here” professional. He battled the pain because he actually wants to compete again. It does neither him nor the team justice to have him as merely a practice player. An NBA roster spot is a precious commodity, so the 15^th Nets player should go to someone who they can turn to in an emergency. If the Sharpe injury doesn’t qualify as one where Giles is the next man up, I don’t know what would be.