Houston Cougars star Emanuel Sharp's sharpshooting and defensive grit could be the bench spark the New Orleans Pelicans desperately need.
The New Orleans Pelicans have a great talent evaluator in Troy Weaver and an aggressive leader in Joe Dumars, so they should never be counted out to grab a player that they like.
They have a second-round pick from the Detroit Pistons to work with in this year's draft, but have not ruled out the possibility of going higher. Right now, though, the focus should be on the players who will be available in the second round, whom the Pelicans could consider.
Continuing to go through second-round options, one player who makes sense is Houston Cougars guard Emanuel Sharp.
Sharp is a 6-foot-3, 205-pound shooting guard who could be the first person to add to the New Orleans bench. They have tried to find shooting off the bench in the form of Jordan Hawkins and even Jordan Poole this season, but nothing has really worked. Sharp could be that answer.
The Cougars guard averaged 15.5 points, 3.0 rebounds and 1.7 assists with 1.2 steals per game on 41.3/37.2/89.1 shooting splits this past season. That echoes what he was did throughout his career, he just continued to improve.
The most exciting part about his game is that he attempted 7.1 threes per game, which is a shooting volume that the Pelicans desperately need to add to their lineup. He also has the capacity as a shooter to be even more accurate. He shot 40.7% on 5.8 shots per game on the 24/25 season.
The reason that Sharp is down in the second round is that he spent five years in college and is 22 years old. He'd be 22 for most of his rookie season, though. New Orleans just drafted Micah Peavy in the second round last year, and he was 24 as a rookie. The Pelicans are fine with the players that are "older" if the talent matches the age.
Like Peavy, Sharp could fill the role of a bench shooter who comes in and plays hard on defense. Playing under Kelvin Sampson for five years just means that he will have winning-basketball engrained into his veins. That's the type of second round picks that this team needs to make to turn into winners.