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Yahoo Sports’ Draft Live crew reacts to the Jazz’s selection of Rutgers forward Ace Bailey with the 5th pick in the 2025 NBA Draft.
The number 5 pick in the 2025 NBA draft is in.
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It is Ace Bailey.
He is going to the Utah Jazz.
Maybe a bit of a surprise.
I know we had talked extensively yesterday thinking that Washington was maybe a good fit for him.
Why do you see this as possibly a good pick for Utah?
It’s an upside swing.
I mean, like we can talk all we want about the flaws with Ace Bailey.
He’s 6’8 with a 7’1 wingspan.
He’s the funnest player in the draft class when you.
Watch these highlights of what he can do as a scorer.
39 against Indiana, 37 against Northwestern, 30 against Penn State.
When he gets going, there’s nothing you can do to stop Ace Bailey as a scorer.
Of course there’s a reason why he’s not the number one pick or the #2 pick or 3 or 4, and he falls to 5.
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That’s because of the flaws and concerns about his game.
Over half his shots in the half court come from mid-range, needs to revive his shot habits.
Made only 36%.
Of his dribble jumper 2s, only 24% of his dribble jumper threes and only 42% of his layups at the rim in the half court.
And so for Ace Bailey falling to number 5 in this situation, there’s a reason for that, but you cannot deny the upside with what he’s capable of doing with growth, maturity on and off the court in time.
So it’s a huge upside swing and maybe it works out for the Jazz as a clean slate young roster.
Yeah, and you combine that with a negative assist to turnover ratio, and let’s talk about what he does defensively.
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Now we know that with his wingspan, with his athleticism, we know that he has a lot of versatility, a lot of upside when it comes to the defensive side of things, but too many times when you watch his film, my man is getting lost.
He doesn’t understand positioning him is an off-ball defender, he should be way ahead of where he is.
Softball defense is not a good thing for him right now.
That’s not a high point in his game.
Has to improve that arm ball, he’s a little bit better just because of his length and his athleticism.
It saves him a lot, but I do think that when you watch him shoot that turnaround fade away in the corner with two defenders coming spinning away from the help side defender, oh my goodness, he looks like he might be the next version of TAC.
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He has his highs, he has some extreme highs.
But when you really dive deep into the film, there’s a lot of concerns, but Utah could hit big.
They could win and go get a star, go get a dude that can average about 18 to 22 next year and just absolutely go crazy.
So I don’t hate it for Utah.
I hope he goes out there and proves all of us wrong and he fixes some of those, you know, low points in his game, but this is a high swing, but I think it’s a, a, a low risk high reward scenario.
