{"id":162195,"date":"2025-09-23T00:44:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T00:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/162195\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T00:44:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T00:44:07","slug":"new-nba-intel-confirmation-of-ace-baileys-preferred-draft-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/162195\/","title":{"rendered":"New NBA Intel: Confirmation of Ace Bailey\u2019s preferred draft spot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">This one has been in circulation since draft night in June: Washington is the<br \/>lottery team, according to various rivals, that was the preferred landing spot<br \/>for Ace Bailey.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">The Wizards had the sixth overall pick. Bailey\u2019s camp refused to engage with<br \/>teams interested in bringing him in for an individual workout in the days<br \/>leading up to the June 25 draft in the apparent hope of steering himself to the<br \/>Wizards. Then Utah, with the No. 5 overall pick, stunningly selected Bailey<br \/>despite a flurry of external suggestions that the Rutgers star wouldn\u2019t want to<br \/>be in Salt Lake City and might even refuse to report to the Jazz.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">The latest chapter in the story quietly unfolded late last week, when the<br \/>Wizards signed Sharife Cooper to a two-way contract. Cooper, of course, is<br \/>the son of Bailey\u2019s manager Omar Cooper, who is said to have largely<br \/>orchestrated Bailey\u2019s polarizing pre-draft process as The People\u2019s Insider<br \/>Jake Fischer detailed below in June<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This one has been in circulation since draft night in June: Washington is thelottery team, according to various&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,62285,590,85,107226],"class_list":{"0":"post-162195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-jazz-analysis","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-utah-jazz-player-analysis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}