Ace Bailey shows all sides of his game in Jazz’s loss to Sixers
· Yahoo Sports
Ace Bailey’s Thursday night performance of a career-best 33 points against the Milwaukee Bucks, which included shooting a single game Jazz franchise record 19 3-point attempts, had everyone talking.
Utah Jazz head coach Will Hardy called the shot volume “crazy,” and Philadelphia 76ers head coach Nick Nurse brought it up ahead of the Sixers’ game against Utah at the Delta Center on Saturday night.
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“Obviously, he’s not afraid to shoot, not afraid to shoot high volume 3s,” Nurse said. “He got 19 of them up the other night... I think it goes back to his ability, with his length and his size and his release and all that stuff that he can actually find those and get them up.”
But, on Saturday, Bailey used his length, size and athleticism to impact the game on the other side of the ball, too.
In a 126-116 loss to the Sixers, Bailey finished with a game-high tying 25 points to go with seven rebounds and four assists, but the stat that stood out was his five blocks, a career high, which he racked up in just three quarters.
“Shoo! I might be a big,” Bailey said with a laugh. “I already told Nurk (Jusuf Nurkić) and Walker (Kessler). I was just talking to Walk and he said I’ve got three more to catch him.”
It’s definitely a harder feat to reach eight blocks, which is Kessler’s career high, but competing with Kessler is not Bailey’s goal.
Instead, he wants to make enough of an improvement on the defensive end that Hardy won’t have any reason to take him off the court next season.
“With the team we’re looking to have, being a defender, it’s gonna be a very big role, especially if you wanna stay on the court, and if you wanna win you’ve got to, and I want to win, so I have to play offense and defense,” Bailey told the Deseret News.
Coming into the NBA, it was Bailey’s ability to score and create for himself that were so impressive. Every team that was within the range to pick Bailey, who went No. 5 overall to the Jazz in last June’s draft, was blown away by his offensive ability.
The questions were whether or not he was going to be a willing passer and how much he would use his size and skill on the defensive end, which were things that weren’t as obvious and clear from his lone season at Rutgers.
“I think he’s grown more defensively than offensively,” Hardy said. “It’s harder to discuss an individual’s defense in these settings, because there are fewer things that you can really measure.
“You know, tonight we’re talking about it because he had five blocks...but Ace is an incredible athlete, and it’s not just offensively. Like, his ability to cover ground and close out his ability to guard the ball...I truly believe that he’s grown more on the defensive side of the ball than he has offensively.”
That’s all echoed by Bailey’s teammates and praised from coaches around the league, who see that he is impacting things on both ends of the floor and doing it more so as the season has progressed.
The idea of having a tall, versatile wing who can be a positive defender is something that the Jazz haven’t had in a long time, and it’s going to be a big part of the Jazz’s future.
“It’s very exciting,” Hardy said.