The Cases For and Against the Sixers Drafting Ace Bailey

MOC weighs the pros and cons of the guy we're gonna spend the next five and a half weeks talking about.

It’s been less than a week since the Sixers landed the No. 3 overall pick in the draft lottery, and Sixers fans are already deeply divided on what they should do. Most of the controversy stems from the polarization of Rutgers wing Ace Bailey (who has been projected as the third pick for many months), with opinions ranging from him being literally Kevin Durant to him being an obvious bust. And so far, the two sides seem to only be digging further into their own priors.

One of the most dangerous traps you can fall into when scouting the draft is confirmation bias. Even professional scouts working for NBA teams have a tendency to start with a certain intuition on a player and spend the rest of draft season working towards confirming that intuition.

So, one of the more useful exercises you can go through in order to mitigate that risk is to steel-man the case both for and against a certain player. For me personally, as someone who is slightly more on the pro-Ace Bailey side of things (I will get into my ultimate conclusions at the end), I found it to be extremely useful to earnestly argue both for and against the idea of the Sixers drafting him at No.3. Let’s start by diving into the pro-Ace argument.

The Case for Ace

The case for drafting Ace is pretty simple: Players with this combination of size (6’8” with a 7’1” wingspan), skill, and athleticism are extremely rare, and the hit rate on them is extremely high. Long-time followers will remember me speaking in the past about the draft community’s tendency to be overly harsh on shot creator prospects, and overly forgiving on “3-and-D” type prospects, and I think that some of that is happening with Ace.

I’m not saying here that Ace’s career will be exactly like any one of these guys, but it’s easy to go back and look at the way scouts nitpicked every little thing about, say, Jayson Tatum (he shoots too many mid range shots!), Michael Porter, Jr. (he doesn’t get to the rim!), or even Jaden McDaniels (too thin / can’t dribble / bad decision maker). The reality is that when you surpass a certain threshold of size, skill, and athleticism, these guys rarely just… suck. They find a way to carve out long, productive NBA careers, even if that means becoming a three-point specialist like Porter, or a 3-and-D guy like McDaniels. You don’t necessarily have to buy into Ace being any one of these three players, you just have to buy into him being sufficiently big, athletic, and skilled to be able to succeed as one of these archetypes as he develops.

In fact, a large part of the reason I’d be excited about taking Ace is because of the fact that, while I have doubts about him ever being an efficient, high volume scorer – the No. 1 option on a good team – the potential for him to be a kick-ass third or fourth option is extremely appealing.

Critics will point to the fact that Bailey has signaled no willingness whatsoever to take on that sort of role, and that’s fair (more on that in the next section). But what’s undeniable is that his potential if he were to become that type of player is sky high.

One thing Bailey has over Porter – or, frankly, any of the guys he gets regularly compared to – is truly elite speed and explosiveness for his size. His shuttle run at the NBA combine ranked in the 93rd percentile among small forwards, and his ¾ court sprint was in the 89th percentile. When he wants to, he can absolutely explode into straight-line drive situations off of close-outs; good luck to NBA defenders trying to wall him off on the perimeter.

This explosiveness shows up on the defensive end, as well. Some of the blocks he’s able to get remind you of Matisse Thybulle; he explodes from 15 feet away and swats a jumper that everyone thought was wide open.

Bailey’s potential to be a playmaker on defense has been perhaps the most under-discussed aspect of his appeal as a prospect. His 4.1 block percentage beats out what Matisse did as a freshman, as well as most of the players he is commonly compared to. He doesn’t have the lateral quickness to be a lockdown defender who guards multiple positions, but his size, length, and ability to close space in a short amount of time will allow him to be a major disruptor off the ball on that end, if he chooses to be.

Offensively, while I highly doubt he ever becomes the Kevin Durant-type scorer that he wants to be, it would also be crazy to act like he’s limited to just becoming some P.J. Tucker-type who stands in the corner, attacks close-outs and does nothing else. Some of his best flashes as a scorer come when he’s running around screens off the ball. His ability to rise up fluidly with clean footwork into jumpers, or rip through and attack the rim, is truly elite.

This ability to be used as an off-ball scorer / shot creator is extremely valuable, and would add a much-needed layer to the Sixers’ offense which has severely lacked off-ball actions in recent years.

Lastly, I think it’s worth clearing up the criticisms around Ace having a “bad handle.” There’s truth at the core of it, but that’s not the phrase I would use to describe it; Ace is not necessarily loose with the ball, and it’s not like he has rocks for hands like Robert Covington. He’s not dribbling the ball off his foot all the time or getting plucked with ease. Instead of saying that he has a bad handle, I would say that he lacks functional mobility with the ball in his hands. He struggles to change direction, he plays from a very upright posture, and he doesn’t yet have the coordination and body control that players like Durant or Paul George have.

Plays like this, though, are a rare exception that make you wonder if Ace could develop those types of skills. The violent side-to-side crossover is reminiscent of Durant. A true optimist on Ace would make the argument that he can develop these types of skills as he grows into his body and works with NBA skills coaches – it’s important to remember that unlike many top prospects, Ace comes from a four-year public high school, and did not have access to top trainers like we see with many other draft prospects of his caliber.

Along that line of thinking, it’s worth noting that if Bailey were to be drafted by the Sixers, he would be walking into a situation that is about as ideal as he could ask for. He would have minimal expectations of contributing right away, he would be able to work with one of his idols in Paul George, and he would be developed by a coaching staff that has lots of experience working with big wings in the past, such as Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby and Scottie Barnes.

While Ace’s disgusting shot selection and concerning quotes about his play-style are indeed rather worrisome, it’s worth also mentioning that he is, by all accounts, a respected teammate and extremely competitive individual. While you’d like a little more self awareness and discretion in his shot selection, there’s something to be admired about a kid with that much self-belief and willingness to shoulder the burden for his team. This is not a kid that we need to worry about shrinking in the biggest moments, not wanting the ball, or not facing challenges. For a fanbase that has endured Ben Simmons, James Harden, and Tobias Harris, that could wind up being a very welcomed change. In general, give me the prospect lacking self-awareness over the prospect lacking confidence and toughness 100 times out of 100.

Ace will have to eat some humble pie early in his career as he figures out that he is not, in fact, Kevin Durant. But after some time, the realities of the NBA have a way of getting through to just about everybody; the potential for him to make insane money and contribute to winning will force him to accept his proper role rather than sticking to his principles and being the next Michael Beasley – a journeyman bucket getter who could have contributed to winning but preferred to be a flashy ball hog on a bunch of terrible teams.

As he settles into his career, the most ideal role for him is something in the realm of Rashard Lewis – a high-teens points per game scorer who spent a large chunk of his time off the ball but had some very real on-ball juice, as well.

With Ace’s potential to be a massively impactful player on both ends, it’s not all that hard to justify taking him over players like V.J. Edgecombe, who likely never creates offense in any meaningful way, or Tre Johnson, who likely ends up being a liability on the defensive end. There’s also a strong case to be made that in the NBA, having a high-level wing is inherently more valuable than a high-level guard or center, all else being equal.

For that reason and many others, Ace at his best is far, far better than any of these other players at their best. His ceiling – hell, even his 80th percentile outcome – is much, much more valuable than, say, Edgecombe’s or Johnson’s. Ace has some of the most obvious star potential in this draft, and selecting him at No. 3 makes a ton of sense for the Sixers.

Should the Sixers Stay at No. 3 or Trade Back in the Draft?

The Case Against Ace

If the case for Ace revolves around his combination of size, skill, and athleticism, a good chunk of the case against him would have to be that he is not as big, skilled, or functionally athletic as we think.

The most obvious part of that is the fact that he measured just 6’7.5” at the combine without shoes, which is smaller than any of the players he’s been compared to, and much smaller than the 6’10” he’s been listed at all year. He also weighs just 203 pounds, and has an insanely skinny frame that might struggle to ever put on real muscle; it is basically impossible to imagine him adding the type of bulk that, say, Tatum has, which is a huge part of the latter’s success as an at-rim finisher and ability to create space in the mid-post.

I remember when Kevin Knox came out of college, people made a similar argument to the one I made in the case for Ace – that he had such obvious NBA-level physical tools and skills that you couldn’t pass on him. I realize these guys are guards, but similar things were said about Scoot Henderson and R.J. Barrett. Well, the reason that Knox has been a bust and that Barrett and Henderson have largely been mediocre is that they just… don’t have those tools and skills. They’re not that big, not that strong, not that explosive, and not that good of shooters. Sometimes the scouting consensus misses on how athletic certain players are, and part of me worries that with Ace, his skinniness, merely average height for his position, and lack of side-to-side agility might be too much for his positive athletic traits to overcome.

What’s worse, much like Knox, Bailey might just not be the shooter that we all think he is; he shot just 69 percent from the free throw line and 34 percent on 3s at Rutgers this season. As I mentioned, a large part of the appeal of his game is his ability to run around screens off the ball, and attack close-outs when defenders scramble to recover to him. Well, if he’s going to be a mediocre shooter, defenders will be largely content to let him fire away, and his potential to impact the game in these ways will disappear.

And of course, perhaps the biggest reason to be concerned about Bailey’s offensive game is the fact that he has absolutely abysmal shot selection and a low-level basketball IQ. For most prospects, it’s reasonable to expect that to improve over time as they experience the realities of the NBA, but in Ace’s case, it appears that his shot selection is a feature, not a bug. He doesn’t see his bad shots as a necessary evil; he doesn’t see them as an evil at all. There is a very real chance that Bailey would rather fail out of the league as a primary shot creator than have a long career as an efficient third option.

I mentioned the name Michael Beasley earlier, which I think is a very realistic downside outcome for Ace. Along that line of thinking, the possibility that Bailey is just a wing version of Dion Waiters is very much on the table. As insane as it is, some players, like Beasley and Waiters, will happily shoot their way out of the league purely on principle. Even when they sorta-kinda come around to accepting their role – like Waiters did in 2016 on OKC – it often comes after completely flaming out on their first team. There is a chance that even if Bailey accepts his ideal role eventually, he first needs to wear out his welcome on the Sixers.

It’s not hard to imagine an outcome in which the Sixers draft Bailey, he spends his first few years in the league putting up insanely inefficient numbers, taking unimaginably bad shots, hijacking the offense consistently, and annoying the shit out of Sixers fans on a regular basis. He would eventually get traded for peanuts, and the Sixers would be left with nothing to show for the horrible season they just had.

This particular aspect of scouting is one that is extremely difficult for us as outsiders to make; a good chunk of how the Sixers feel about this will be based on their interviews and behind-the-scenes intel gathering. They must determine to what degree Bailey will be willing to accept a lesser role if he doesn’t somehow prove himself to be Kevin Durant 2.0.

But it’s also important to point out that willingness is not the only factor at play here. There’s also the possibility that even if Bailey is willing to cool down his shot selection, he still just lacks the feel and IQ to ever play serious minutes on a contending team. He can’t pass at a high level, he falls asleep on defense from time to time, and even when he’s not shooting, he will too often feel like a wildcard, disconnected from the team’s infrastructure on offense. The closest name I can think of for this type of outcome would be Jonathan Kuminga. Post-Lakers Kyle Kuzma is another name worth mentioning here.

If you watch full games of Ace on Rutgers, the most common negative thought you will have is that he’s just not a serious basketball player. He’s a completely delusional player with a misguided understanding of how basketball works. He thinks that the ability to make tough shots is more valuable than the ability to create easy ones. He plays as if you get extra points for style. He shows no flashes of layered thinking in terms of how to manipulate defenses – if I do X, the defense will do Y, and then I can take advantage of that by doing Z. He only ever thinks about how he can get to his own shot, and if the defense takes away the shot that he wants, he will just maneuver his way into a more difficult shot.

Again, I could land these types of punches on Ace all day, but all that really matters is whether he will adapt his game at the next level. Based on the brief windows into his mind that we’ve seen so far, the answer is that if he ever does, it’s going to take a while. For the Sixers, who not only are sort of in a win-now mode, but also just want to see some value from this pick during the time that he is on their team, it’s worth wondering if he’s just never going to reach his potential on the team that drafts him; he might need to bounce around the league for a bit and become so humbled that he gives up on the wannabe Durant gimmick.

So, it really doesn’t take much for Ace to bust – in fact, it only requires a couple of things to remain the same. 1) He would need to continue to be a mediocre shooter, and 2) He would need to continue to inflexibly view himself as Kevin Durant 2.0. If those two things happen, we are talking about a disaster of a draft pick.

Which side am I on?

As of right now, I still have Ace third on my board behind Cooper Flagg and Dylan Harper. I have Derik Queen fourth (I’ll be sure to write about him at a later date), and I believe he and Ace to be roughly on the same tier. For that reason, my preferred outcome for the Sixers here is still for them to trade back and draft Queen.

That being said, I would not be at all critical of them staying at No. 3 and drafting Ace, even despite his many flaws. I expect him to be a bit of a project, and I think a large part of his career will come down to who he is as a person and his willingness to change his play style. But given his potential, and the fact that teammates and coaches have spoken highly of him, I lean towards the idea that he will accept the proper role for him and be able to contribute to winning in the NBA.

I said on Twitter the other day that the 50th percentile outcome for Ace is something like a wing version of Jalen Green – an erratic pseudo-star who has weeks long stretches of looking like an elite scorer, but is ultimately viewed as somewhat of an unserious basketball player who doesn’t produce winning at the highest level. That, along with the many potential worse outcomes, is pretty scary for a No. 3 overall pick. But the upper-echelon outcomes for Ace are just several orders of magnitude higher than that of, say, Edgecombe.

It’s fair to assume that Bailey’s shot creation abilities tap out on the level of someone like Rudy Gay, or perhaps even below that, but the potential for him to make an impact as an off-ball threat and defensive menace would still allow him to separate from that mold in terms of his impact on winning. If you’re as tall, long, explosive, coordinated, and skilled as Ace, you tend to find your way in the NBA. There will be growing pains, and he might drive us nuts early on, but I have no issue betting on someone with talent as tantalizing as his, even if I am aware of all of the possible downside outcomes.

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Mike O’Connor is the best O’Connor in basketball writing. Previously of The Athletic, you can find Mike on Twitter @MOConnor_NBA. Mike’s writing is brought to you by Body Bio, supplements based on science, focusing on your gut and brain health.