SALT LAKE CITY \u2014 Ace Bailey hit the sauna. He dipped into the hot tub. He ran. He biked.<\/p>\n
The rookie tried just about everything to kick the illness that hit about a week before the season began.<\/p>\n
A couple of preseason performances had already stirred excitement around him \u2014 but suddenly, he was sick, doing anything he could to “sweat it out.”<\/p>\n
Try as he might, though, what he really needed was time.<\/p>\n
Instead of gearing up for his first NBA season, Bailey was forced to rest and recover.<\/p>\n
“The timing of getting sick wasn’t ideal, because he had shown his overall skill set, and everybody was pretty excited \u2014 him included,” Jazz coach Will Hardy said.<\/p>\n
So far, though, Bailey hasn’t contributed much to Utah’s somewhat surprising 2-1 start. After starting in the preseason, the rookie has come off the bench, averaging 15.7 minutes per game.<\/p>\n
He has just 8 points through three games and hasn’t looked quite like the same player who stood out so effortlessly during the preseason.<\/p>\n
Bailey said Monday he’s “come a long way” and feels “a lot better,” but there’s no denying the sickness set him back.<\/p>\n
“That’s gonna mess with you, not being there with my teammates, not having fun, building chemistry with those guys,” Bailey said. “I mean, missing out on a lot of things. So just me getting back, recovering from it, it’s a good thing.”<\/p>\n
Even when fully healthy, though, the Jazz expect ups and downs from the No. 5 overall pick.<\/p>\n
Hardy cautioned after Bailey’s 25-point preseason debut that not every night would look that good \u2014 and on the flip side, that every rough game shouldn’t be overanalyzed, either.<\/p>\n
“It’s a long road \u2014 82 games is a long time,” Hardy said. “Ace is also at the very beginning of what hopes to be a really long career. We have the responsibility now of trying to make sure that we’re bringing him along at the right pace.”<\/p>\n
That includes bringing him back from an illness, as well as trying to ease him into NBA basketball.<\/p>\n
“We’re just trying to stay steady with our approach of what’s expected of him every day,” Hardy said. “But, to me, he’s handled it really well. He hasn’t dipped in terms of his energy level, or willingness to be a part of the group, or any of those things, with some early adversity.”<\/p>\n
Walt Clayton Jr.’s CP3 moment<\/p>\n
In the moment, Walter Clayton Jr. didn’t realize exactly what he pulled in his NBA debut last week against the LA Clippers.<\/p>\n
Then he watched film the next day.<\/p>\n
That’s when Clayton saw himself using a screen to get Chris Paul on his hip, then baited the legendary point guard into a foul as he knocked down a floater \u2014 not a bad way to score your first NBA points.<\/p>\n
“It’s a surreal moment,” Clayton said. “You grow up watching these guys, and now playing against them, using the moves that you might have got from them on them.”<\/p>\n
That moment was made even more memorable due to the relationship Clayton had built with Paul during the pre-draft process. Clayton’s trainer connected him with the future Hall of Famer, and the former Florida guard wasn’t shy in peppering Paul with questions about the league.<\/p>\n
“I was just talking to him, just asking multiple questions,” Clayton said. “It’s 82 games. \u2026 You gotta take care of your body, stay healthy throughout the season. A lot more film. So just asking them questions on how to be a pro.”<\/p>\n
Turns out, he’s a quick learner.<\/p>\n
The Jazz have trusted Clayton to close out each of the last two games. <\/p>\n
Bailey regrets not watching more of Markkanen<\/p>\n
It’s well known that Bailey has tried to model his game after Kevin Durant \u2014 but there’s one player he wishes he had watched more of: Lauri Markkanen.<\/p>\n
“Not much. Not much. But now I wish I would have,” he said after Markkanen scored 51 points on Monday. “There’s a lot to learn from him.”<\/p>\n
Good thing he has a pretty good seat to Markkanen’s play now.<\/p>\n
So what does Bailey like about Markkanen’s game?<\/p>\n
“He’s got the vision, he can score anywhere on the court at will,” the Jazz rookie said. “I mean, very, very, very, very competitive. He wants to win no matter what, as you can tell. I mean, he leaves it all out on the court.”<\/p>\n
\n The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SALT LAKE CITY \u2014 Ace Bailey hit the sauna. He dipped into the hot tub. He ran. He…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,843,1193,134,1194,180,322,590,44,1195,1196,85,434,1191,1197,1192],"class_list":{"0":"post-247598","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-cars","11":"tag-classifieds","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-homes","14":"tag-jobs","15":"tag-local","16":"tag-nba","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-radio","19":"tag-salt-lake","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-television","22":"tag-traffic","23":"tag-utah","24":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247598","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=247598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}