Sixers

This Ace Bailey Soundbite Sucks

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jun 24th, 2025 · 5:20 PM EDT

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NBA Draft about 24 hours away. Sixers with the #3 pick. Here’s Ace Bailey:

"I can only control what I can control, you can think what you think – I'm focused on basketball"

Ace Bailey talks about his mindset ahead of the 2025 NBA Draft: pic.twitter.com/Gwt1TrNmf2

— SNY (@SNYtv) June 24, 2025

That’s Keith Pompey from the Inquirer with question #2, asking about the perception of Bailey skipping pre-draft workouts.

“I feel like I can only control what I can control; you can think how you think, but I can (only) control what I can control.“

Well, you can control showing up to a workout and not cancelling. You can control your choice of representation, who you surround yourself with, and what advice you take. At the same time, the kid is 18 and when you and I were 18 we were probably sitting on our fat asses playing World of Warcraft in a freshman dorm room, so you wouldn’t expect Ace Bailey to be this masterful room reader when he’s not even old enough to drink a beer or rent a car.

That being said, these red flags are numerous and bothersome. The agent is Sharife Cooper’s dad, who doesn’t have any NBA clients and reportedly wanted money to do on-camera interviews. Then you’ve got some reporting about this guy looking for a “promise” from the Sixers or someone else to draft Bailey, and you mix it in with the workout shenanigans and that’s three things just off the top of my head. The legitimacy of these various things here can be debated by people in the know, but what you have here is enough smoke to start a relatively large fire, and that should be enough to stay away from the kid.

Luckily for us, the Sixers have drafted well during Daryl Morey’s tenure, so you feel relatively comfortable that they’ll make the right decision. They knocked it out of the park with Tyrese Maxey and Jared McCain and it seems like people are sleeping on that a bit.

But yeah, that Bailey soundbite sucks.