‘Diamond in the Dirt’

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Venus Lacy rumbles down Venus Lacy Parkway in a tan Suzuki Aerio with 264,770 miles on its odometer. In her rearview mirror is an 8-foot-tall sign outside Brainerd High featuring her resume: Girls state championship 1984; La. Tech NCAA National Championship 1988; USA Olympic Women’s Basketball Gold Medal Winner 1996. On her GPS screen is the address for a home where her great nephew, Airious Bailey, spent time as a bone-thin tenderfoot.

The engine strains to make it up a series of steep, shaded hills until she slows by the two-story house. She points to a second-floor window above a pitched roof over the porch and recalls her sister, Alicia, chasing Bailey, who knew no bounds. Kinfolk shouted, “Ooooweeee!” when the hyperactive boy with the gap-tooth smile and high cheekbones entered a room. He executed standing backflips and jumped from counter to counter before climbing atop the refrigerator. No escape was too daunting.

“When he did something he wasn’t supposed to do, he knew to run because she didn’t play,” Lacy says. “One day, next thing you know, we saw someone flying to the front yard. Mhm. We knew he could jump from the start.”

Degree of difficulty never deters Bailey. At 18, his gumption only grows as NBA scouts gauge where he might land in Wednesday’s NBA Draft after an uneven one-and-done campaign at Rutgers alongside fellow lottery pick hopeful Dylan Harper ended in a 15-17 conflagration. Diligence is being done to decipher what went awry at Rutgers and if they will perform more efficiently for multi-billion-dollar franchises that will pay them more than $10 million per year if they are top-four picks.

“Sh— getting fun,” Bailey says. “I love the process. I love the game. So all of this sh—just fun. Sh— fun. Excuse my language, but it is all fun.”

To evaluators, Bailey, a 6-foot-7 wing, is the most polarizing prospect, vacillating between balletic and illogical in a beat. He revels in his rawness, calling himself “the diamond in the dirt.” He wears Toy Story pajama pants dotted with three-eye aliens while training in a warehouse gym outside Atlanta under the guidance of Omar Cooper, a Newark native who scored over 1,000 points as a sleight-of-hand showman at Jersey City State.

Cooper, 50, met Bailey in the eighth grade and featured him on his travel team, Athletes of Tomorrow, before Bailey relocated 100 miles south for high school. Cooper then helped route him to Rutgers, where Cooper’s friend, Brandin Knight, is the associate coach. Bailey credits Cooper, whose son, Sharife, played in the NBA briefly, and whose daughter, Te’a, played in the WNBA, for developing him. For his part in the process, Cooper sat in a courtside seat on the baseline directly opposite Gov. Phil Murphy last season.

“I didn’t want to do it,” Bailey says of the 100-mile move south from Chattanooga to Powder Springs, Georgia, in 2022. “I was homesick. But I had to do it to get here.”

Cooper says anything short of Bailey going No. 1 would be “uncivilized.” Scouts inquire about the prospect’s relationship with Cooper, who was indicted for possessing a machine gun and black short-clip Uzi in 2003, a decade after being charged with attempted murder and possession with intent to distribute cocaine on or by school property.

While weapons and murder charges were dismissed, he served six months in Mountain View state prison for a cocaine conviction, according to court records and the New Jersey department of corrections. Decades into a personal rebrand, Cooper is not a certified agent, and his LifeStyle Sports Agency does not have another NBA client. He has an FBI number in court records, and has been coy regarding Bailey’s pre-draft workouts and cancelled one with the 76ers last week, keeping the league guessing about whether a deal for Bailey to a certain team is already in place or Cooper, known for his stoic look and controlling nature, is overplaying his hand.

“He been showing me the path in every way,” Bailey says. “On and off the court.”

Questions abound. Last fall, when Bailey called his mother, Ramika McGee, to tell her he loved her, she said she loved him, too, then asked, “What’s wrong?” When he declared for the draft, Bailey generically thanked teammates and coaches but named only two security guards — Rob Wilson and Julio Hernandez — who ushered him on and off court at every game, home and away. He reserved a seat at the draft for his girlfriend, who goes by “Piggy.” He plans to hug his mother first when selected.

“Because we dreamed about this since I was a little boy,” he says.

Bailey evinces eye-popping athleticism with up-and-under dunks. On jumpers, he possesses the quick-strike capability of a cottonmouth; on drives, he has the nerve and narrow hips to maneuver past pinch points that give others pause. His 7-foot wingspan rivals that of a windmill and allows him to compensate for rotational lapses. When asked about his rebounding approach, Bailey shrugs.

“Ain’t got nothing else to do,” he says.

Lacy marvels at Bailey’s derring-do and from-the-logo fearlessness. In a back booth at Bojangles on Brainerd Road, her gravy-smothered biscuit goes cold as she considers the rotating cast around him.

“I know how hard it can be,” she says. “Every time I see somebody, I ask his mother, ‘Who is that?’ She says, ‘They OK. They with the village.’ I say, ‘OK.’ I don’t want anyone using him and throwing him away.”

All over the place

The commodification of Bailey commenced when he suited up as pitcher and shortstop for the Avondale Red Sox when he was 5. Manager Tre Lowe looked at his length and athleticism and envisioned him playing quarterback on the Inner City Broncos team he coached.

“I had to snatch him from another organization,” Lowe says. “Had to keep Ace in that hole.”

Bailey came from a boisterous clan of “tall, thin men and women with meat on their bodies,” Lacy says. His father Richard stood 6-foot-6; McGee was 6-2. Richard tried to play at Houston after junior college stint, but says, “I was a little too into the girls.” McGee played forward at West Virginia, but blew out both of her knees to end her career.

Bailey wore bowties and suspenders for AME Zion services. He played basketball on a blue-tile floor at Eastdale Community Center, where entertainer Usher Raymond danced as a boy. In baseball, Bailey pitched sidearm. When defenders blitzed in the youth football league’s Super Bowl, Bailey, all of 8 and playing quarterback, took off on a 40-yard scamper.

“He juked two guys, stiff-armed a guy, jumped over a guy and took it all the way to the house,” coach Larry Hunt says. “Shoot, I’ll never forget that day.”

Bailey’s father was in and out of his life, as well as local courthouses. Richard Bailey, a railroad transfer loader, was charged with multiple thefts and put on probation. Bailey’s maternal grandfather, Reginald, took Bailey down steep winding roads to angle for catfish at Raccoon Mountain, away from local gangs and gun violence.

“Trouble do find you,” Lacy says. “He could have gone in that direction but chose to better himself.”

Bailey sought guidance. To work with Christoffer Collins, who trained Rhyne Howard, the 2022 WNBA Draft’s No. 1 pick, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the NBA’s MVP, Bailey messaged Collins: “Can I get in the gym? Can I?” When he heard Howard knew Kevin Durant, Bailey asked her, “Can I meet him? Can I?” Durant eventually messaged Bailey encouragement.

“Ace lost it that day,” Collins says. “He’d been trying for a year.”

Bailey co-starred for a team called We Get Buckets with a boy named Boo Carter. The coach was Cedric Dozier, a contemporary of McGee’s at Brainerd High. Opposing parents had long demanded to see Bailey’s birth certificate. In eighth grade, counterparts couldn’t advance the ball past half-court. After games, Bailey asked Dozier for $10. When given the money, Bailey ran it over to an unhoused individual.

“People salivated over the wingspan and skillset,” Collins says. “The potential was freak of nature with speed, explosiveness. Even better kid.”

Bailey enrolled at Boyd-Buchanan, a Christian high school of 400 students. He was offered couches to sit on because he didn’t fit in desks. Between classes, he visited the main office, where staffers brought snacks from home for him.

“He ate a thousand calories an hour,” principal Renee Hood says. “His brain, hands and feet had not met. He wasn’t always aware of his size, but he was always hugging, loving.”

Coordination came. Early on, Bailey received the ball in the right corner, dribbled along the baseline, beat his man and dunked on a help defender. The closest referee shimmied; the announcer shouted, “Acccce! Baileyyy!” Another time, Bailey grabbed a loose ball, took a dribble and threw a one-handed pass three-quarters of the court that bounced once before finding a teammate in stride for a layup.

“He didn’t like school too much, but that’s OK, who does?” Bucs coach Josh Templeton says. “He worked his ass off at practice and was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. So much energy. I’d talk to the team in a huddle; he’d hang from the net flat-footed doing pullups. I got used to it. Pure joy.”

When Boyd celebrated a district title, Bailey struggled to snip his net cord and declared, “These scissors are wrong!” When Boyd cut the nets down for the regional title, Bailey struggled again and was given a knife to finish.

“Don’t give him a knife!” teammates shouted.

Everyone survived and advanced to the state quarterfinals before losing.

Movement was afoot in Lookout Mountain’s shadows. During the playoffs, McGee, a driver’s license examiner for Homeland Security, and Antoric Wilson, a long-time friend who was released from federal prison in March 2018 after serving 13 years in a cocaine case, bought a house for $265,000 in Chattanooga. When Wilson was arrested in 2004, police seized 1,100 grams of crack cocaine, $7,500 in cash and a rifle, according to court documents. He said he found the cocaine in the woods and made money selling pit bull puppies for $200-$400.

By the time of the house purchase, Ramika, pregnant with a daughter she named ArMoni, celebrated.

“Can you say Happy family cause I can!!!!” McGee wrote on Facebook.

But McGee’s mother died that summer and Bailey, who had a scholarship offer from Ole Miss after a team camp in Memphis, uprooted.

McGee had declined an overture from Cooper’s Athletes of Tomorrow colleague Damon Wilson, but relented to let her son pursue a larger platform. That November, as his sophomore season opener neared, Bailey withdrew from Boyd and enrolled at McEachern High, where Cooper’s kids had been McDonald’s All-Americans, in Powder Springs, Georgia. AOT practiced at McEachern, and both teams were incubators for the agency Cooper formed six months ahead of AOT and McEachern alum, Isaac Okoro, going fifth in the 2020 NBA Draft. Dozier moved to Georgia with Bailey and started coaching with AOT. They lived in a house together.

Templeton tallied the losses.

“That’s three state championships walking out the door,” he said.

Extra sugar

Between the weigh stations and water towers that line the stretch of Interstate 75 connecting Chattanooga and Atlanta, tall tales, like The Bigfoot Museum, are peddled on billboards. Existential questions — “Where are You Going? Heaven or Hell?” — are also posed.

At McEachern, a fiberglass brave with a bare chest stands atop a pedestal and looms over the football field for the public school with 2,400 students. By nickname, they are Indians, and locals refer to the campus as The Reservation. When Bailey arrived, he learned a tribal legend: If you walk beneath the bell tower, you won’t graduate.

“I ain’t ever walking under that then!” he said.

He was goofy but genuine, stringy but strong. Basketball coach Tremayne Anchrum showed him videos of NBA models Jayson Tatum and Durant to educate him on attacking efficiently. To improve his agility, Bailey went to a gym where NBA stars Anthony Edwards and Jaylen Brown worked out.

“The plan was to keep Ace in the gym 24/7,” Cooper says. “For the most part, it was sunup to sundown for him to be able to turn the corner.”

Cooper says he moved to Georgia around 2004-05 and sought to purchase cheaper real estate than was available in New Jersey with cash. He rapped under the name OCoop and started AOT for his daughter in 2009 amid metro Atlanta’s competitive youth basketball landscape. Cooper had gained a reputation of developing boys and girls. Bailey was his latest project, and Cooper pitted the 15-year-old against 17-year-olds. Bailey hardened his approach but maintained a soft touch on jumpers. He was too passive, at times, tomahawk dunking at others.

“Even if you playing one on one versus a 9-year-old, you have to destroy that 9-year-old,” Cooper said.

Teammates wondered about wear and tear from around-the-clock training.

“The coaches relied on him to the point where he couldn’t do much because he was fatigued,” McEachern guard Dozie Onyirimba says.

Bailey spoke with his mother via phone everyday and visited on weekends. Sustenance came at Waffle House. Bailey ordered the turkey bacon cheese meal, double hash browns fried hard, three sides of sausages and grits, extra sugar.

“With a Hi-C fruit punch,” he says.

He had a hummingbird’s metabolism, and competitive stamina developed against high-caliber counterparts. Newton High pitted him against Stephon Castle, the NBA’s Rookie of the Year; Wheeler High featured Isaiah Collier, another first-round pick. SEC recruiters flocked.

Two prospectors knew the best inroad. Auburn assistant Ira Bowman and Knight both went to Seton Hall Prep and played with Cooper on summer teams. Bowman coached Cooper’s son Sharife at Auburn; the summer before Knight became Big East co-Player of the Year, Cooper, who swept glass off housing project courts to learn the game amid an itinerant youth in and around Newark, trained Knight.

“He gave me more game,” Knight says.

But when Bailey visited Auburn in September 2022, he left uncommitted. Four months later, he committed in Rutgers’ home locker room following a win. While in New Jersey, Cooper and Bailey watched Harper play for Don Bosco. Cooper had welcomed Harper to LifeStyle on Instagram a year earlier, and Knight coached Dylan’s brother, Ron Jr.

That April, Harper joined AOT for a weekend in Atlanta. It went smoothly. Six weeks later, Rutgers hired Marlon “Smoke” Williamson, a Central Michigan assistant represented by LifeStyle. Three weeks later, Rutgers signed McEachern guard Jamichael Davis, also from Chattanooga.

“Omar’s family,” Knight says. “That relationship runs deep.”

Bailey’s growth accelerated, but he also needed to slow down. One day, he told McEachern athletic director Myra Camese that he drove through a stop sign.

“Oh, Jesus,” she said. “Let me get out of the parking lot before practice ends!”

Bailey’s stock rose as Cooper diversified his portfolio. In 2015, Cooper released an album called “Law Abiding Citizen” with singles like “Nosey Neighbors” and “Full Time Hustler.” In 2020, he started his agency; attorney Donté Grant, whose website was InjuredTodayCallDonte.com, was LifeStyle’s certified agent. There was also a partnership with the Young Money APAA agency led by Adie von Gontard, whose great-grandfather co-founded Anheuser-Busch, and Lil Wayne, the popular rapper. On Instagram, Cooper posted videos of his daughter getting a BMW SUV and Okoro getting a Range Rover as welcomes. Sharife stepped into a Bentley.

Cooper also opened LifeStyle Sports Bistro across from Ollie’s Bargain Outlet in Marietta; LifeStyle Realty advertised that Cooper was “bringing Dreams to Reality” for over 20 years. His colleague, Latish Kinsler, had six open federal tax liens and led the football end of the sports agency. In 2023, they advertised a video with land being developed: “LifeStyle Arena on the way”.

Cooper’s investment in Bailey came as players gained compensation beyond scholarships via name, image and likeness (NIL) deals for the first time. At the start of his senior season, Harper, who had changed his representation to Roc Nation, committed to Rutgers at Fanatics headquarters in Manhattan; his circle celebrated with Armand de Brignac champagne, also known as Ace of Spades. “We got one Ace,” Harper’s mother, Maria, said. “Now I need the other!”

During a playoff game in Georgia, Bailey hit a half-court buzzer beater and bumped chests with Cooper.

“Knocked me square off my damn feet,” Cooper says. “Ace always been flimsy but done got stronger with pushups.”

McEachern fell, 51-41, in the state championship.

“Thought he’d be devastated,” Anchrum says, “but he says, ‘Coach, you gonna win about three of these things.’ I’m like, ‘Man, I’m crying because you didn’t get this.’”

Responsibility was transferred at the McDonald’s All-American Game in Houston.

“You’re responsible for Ace now,” Camese told Harper.

“He forgets everything!” Harper said.

“I know,” she said. “That’s why you have to be responsible for him!”

Getting to know Ace

Mike MacDonald learned to play the game in Philadelphia’s Catholic League before walking on at Rutgers in 1971. In his senior season, Phil Sellers, a bouncy 6-foot-4 wing from Brooklyn, led the Scarlet Knights to the NCAA Tournament. While Sellers went on to the Final Four and then the NBA, MacDonald climbed the corporate ladder to be Xerox’s CEO and become one of the basketball program’s top donors. Last July, he welcomed the team to his manse in Spring Lake and took measure of the 17-year-old Bailey.

“A little skinnier than I thought he would be,” MacDonald says. “But let me tell you something: Nobody has the talent that Ace has that I’ve seen at Rutgers.”

Bailey wore a flashy chain around his neck that afternoon. As he dunked on a hoop in the pool and leaned over the billiards table to size up shots with his cue stick, a black medallion encircled by diamonds with a lion’s head topped by a crown and LifeStyle Sports Agency across it dangled.

Bailey attracted talent of all kinds. On Halloween, his favorite rapper, Hunxho, whose album “22” had just been released, attended a practice. The 22 commemorated the birth year of the artist’s son, as well as when he says he beat a RICO case. Rutgers gifted him a No. 22 jersey.

Before practices, Bailey took a puff from his inhaler, then wiggled his arms and legs out wide. He grunted, grimaced and shouted at himself when a shot went errant. “Goddamn, Ace!” he said. “How the f--- I miss that sh–?” During sprints, he ran so fast that he continued five rows into the stands to decelerate. During three-man weaves, he passed the ball and shouted, “I’m coming!” Twenty minutes in, he yawned. Ten minutes later, he was parched, but his pronunciation made it sound like “porsched.”

“He’s got an accent on him,” guard Jordan Derkack says. “Any words with ‘R’ he says weird. Mirror is ‘murr.’ I translate for everybody else.”

Bailey wore a Louis Vuitton scarf as he rode around campus on an electric scooter, a cell phone in each pant pocket. He called almost everyone “Big Dog.” When he saw coach Steve Pikiell, he shouted, “WHAT’S UP, STEVE?” so loudly it echoed in an arena where Cooper sat in the third row. Only academic adviser Randi Larson received an honorific: “Miss Randi.”

While marketed as a duo, Harper and Bailey were individuals. Harper, a lefty, was born five months earlier, stood three inches shorter, and lived in an off-campus apartment with his grandparents a few doors down; Bailey, a righty, lived in a dorm visible from the arena. One day, Harper ambled into Bailey’s room as Bailey performed yo-yo tricks.

“He was walking the dog, throwing it at me, pulling it back,” Harper says. “Who knows how to yo-yo? I don’t.”

Senior Jeremiah Williams recalled a night, around 9 o’clock, when he saw Bailey and Davis on trampolines at the gymnastics gym.

“They were flipping, flipping,” Williams says. “You’d never know Ace is as tall as he is.”

During the women’s basketball team’s opener, Bailey held a paper cup before throwing it in the air and trying to spin it on his finger like a ball. He failed eight times. When the cup fell over a ledge, Bailey, like a child watching ice cream fall off a cone, dropped his head.

Teammates craned their necks to find him. During weightlifting, Bailey positioned his feet on pull-up bars for bat hangs.

“It was nuts,” says Peter Noble, a guard. “We were like, ‘Dude, what the hell is going on?’”

When Harper announced his NIL deals, Bailey reacted on Instagram: “Let me borrow couple $$?”

But cash flowed his way, too. Both had Nike deals despite Rutgers’s contract with Adidas, and Cooper was able to leverage the success with Bailey to land a coveted contract to return to Nike’s Elite Youth Basketball League. Cooper, who closed his bistro and watched his former client Okoro sign a three-year, $38 million contract with new representation, accompanied Bailey to autograph signings. In September, LifeStyle Sports Agency failed to renew its paperwork with the state of Georgia, according to corporate division records. The agency’s LLC status was revoked before being reinstated after a $200 fine. Bailey and Harper jerseys sold for $120.

“My circle deal with all of that,” Bailey said. “All I have to do is put the ball in the hoop.”

In his first game, the ball rolled up his arm; he corralled it with a snake charmer’s nonchalance before hitting a fadeaway. The next game he saw a double team coming and faded off one foot with 13 seconds on the shot clock. The ball arced high above the backboard before whispering through the net.

“That turnaround, fadeaway three ball?” Anchrum says. “I’ve been screaming at him about not shooting that shot for years, but you get to the point at the NBA level where it looks like a better shot. In a high school game it is like, ‘Argh! Not that one! No, please don’t! No, no! Oh, good shot.”

Nasty Streak

The Hoo, a brassy contingent of the Kennesaw State Owls’ marching band, warmed up inside the Convocation Center in Kennesaw, Georgia, as Bailey arrived at 11:11 a.m. on Nov. 24. It was a homecoming for Bailey, who was accompanied by a security guard as they passed a sign for the tornado refuge area. On the court, Bailey bobbed his head as the band director demanded better from his charges.

“That ain’t got no sauce on it! No sauce!” the director said. “Trombones, this next one has to be nasty.”

Rutgers, ranked No. 24 nationally, brought security on the road for the first time in program history, but Kennesaw jumped them for a 21-point lead. Three supporters held up Fatheads featuring a smiling Bailey wearing sunglasses; the student section chanted, “Overrated!” as he scored 17 points on 17 shots. Rutgers rallied, but on the final play, his cross-court pass was intercepted. Rutgers fell, 79-77.

“Everybody coming at you,” Lacy said. “Take it back to them. Leave them speechless.”

Rutgers flew to Las Vegas for the Players Era Festival, an event that allowed players to share in revenue for the first time, and Bailey shot a video for Starbucks at the MGM Grand Casino. He tended to dangle on the perimeter, but when activated was kinetic. Against Alabama, he dunked off the wrong foot while getting fouled. “Let’s go, boy!” Cooper shouted. After Rutgers lost, Knight and Cooper caught up by slot machines. Known to favor fur coats, Cooper, wearing a white puffer jacket and Cleveland Cavaliers shorts, looked ready to insert himself into a Rutgers rotation that lacked depth and experience in an era filled with older players.

Evaluators followed everywhere. Typically, Rutgers attracted regional scouts. Now, general managers paraded through Piscataway. The Nets, who have four first-round picks, all but moved back to New Jersey. One team’s intel collector met a student manager at the Starbucks in a Target off campus to mine for morsels of information.

Bailey knew scouts wanted to see improved playmaking. When he scored 15 points and grabbed 15 rebounds against Penn State, he beamed.

“Did I get any assists?” Bailey said.

“No,” Derkack said. “You don’t pass.”

“I do pass!” Bailey said. “Did I have any assists?”

“Assists?” communications staffer Chris Corso said. “I don’t think so.”

“Goddamnit!” Bailey said. “What! The! F---!”

Bailey tantalized as a soloist. At Indiana, with Harper sick, Bailey split defenders for a layup, then jab-stepped and netted a jumper. He reverse-pivoted for a teardrop runner. He used a double crossover, muscled over defenders, floated a ball high off the glass and finished through contact for 39 points. He also blocked four shots.

Still, Rutgers lost; regression followed. When Bailey shot 2-of-6 from the line in a loss to Wisconsin, Cooper rebounded for Bailey, who wore a hoodie over his head on court afterward.

Post play was not Bailey’s bailiwick. His preferred post-up position was a foot inside the 3-point arc, and he was too weak to back down defenders. Still, Pikiell deployed him at five positions to varying degrees of success and prodded Bailey to be more aggressive on the boards. Bailey often lost track of his man defensively.

But upon recovering, he was an energetic eraser with cartoonish alacrity. When UCLA’s 7-foot-3 Aday Mara drove for a layup, Bailey blocked his shot above the backboard’s square. Another time, he swatted a 3-point attempt, sprinted ahead and finished with a two-handed dunk.

“Absurd,” Harper says. “So disruptive.”

To combat winter, Bailey often wore a faux fur trapper hat with plastic bear claws hanging from them, as well as matching mules, both of which were gifts from Wilson, his mother’s fiancee.

“I’m nowhere used to this,” Bailey said.

Family members were the last ones to leave following home games. After a win over Illinois, custodians used leaf blowers to clean the stands as he twirled his 3-year-old sister before lifting her to the rim and letting her dangle.

“Stressing me out!” said McGee, who wore shirts emblazoned with images of his latest dunks. “God blessed me with him.”

Headaches emerged. At Maryland, he departed with four points and 12:55 left in a must-win game. On the bench, he wore a towel over his head. Scouts photographed him sitting alone while the team was in a huddle. Bailey retreated to the locker room, and Pikiell said Bailey had a “bug”. . A message board publisher said a source “VERY CLOSE” to Bailey called it an asthma attack.

“He had a migraine,” Knight said months later.

Bailey faded, failing to record double-digit rebounds in the last nine games, hitting 7 of his final 39 three-pointers and fouling out of his finale. Rutgers missed the NCAA Tournament. When he arrived at Jersey Mike’s Arena for the NJSIAA championship two days later, the two security guards escorted him, his girlfriend and Ayton Branche, a LifeStyle operator, to baseline seats.

“I told Ace I might have a job in London,” says Zach Martini, a graduate forward with a Princeton degree, “and he said, ‘Who the hell is going to tutor my kids?’ I love him.”

Bailey flew south, but LifeStyle’s influence grew as Rutgers operated with an outgoing president and an interim athletic director. In April, Rutgers signed NJIT guard Tariq Francis, who was America East’s top scorer.

Knight’s his mentor; Cooper’s his agent.

Gangsta’s Paradise

Morning broke on the day of the NBA Draft Lottery with “For The Love of Money” by the O’Jays playing on the sound system on the first floor of the Marriott Marquis in Chicago, where the league’s decision-makers had descended to evaluate 75 prospects at its combine. Black Cadillac Escalades and Mercedes Benz Sprinter vans dropped off players, coaches, general managers and owners at the revolving door. The tune changed to “Gangsta’s Paradise.”

The lobby was filled with agents, executives and videographers. At 7:20 a.m., Ralph Flagg, whose son, Cooper, was rated as the top prospect after leading Duke to the Final Four, ran into Magic scout Rae Miller, who had recruited Flagg to Montverde Academy. Ralph Flagg, wearing a gray T-shirt emblazoned with “Results”, waved to him.

“Good luck tonight!” Miller said. “Not that you need it!”

It was widely believed Cooper Flagg, a 6-foot-9 wing, would go No. 1 regardless. The question was who came next. Harper and Bailey remained a pair, having recently flown to Milwaukee with their agents and trainers to shoot a Nike commercial with two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo. Many mock drafts projected Harper to be selected No. 2 and Bailey third. That day, the NBA measured each prospect; Bailey, listed by Rutgers at 6-foot-10, shrank to 6-foot-7. His standing reach was 8-11, body fat 6.9%.

Front offices ran numbers through software to forecast Bailey’s place in the +/- matrix of modern basketball. They wondered about balance and focus, conditioning and burst. Does he have feel? Will he lift weights? Analytics departments differed with on-court evaluators regarding his dependability. His fate lay between diligence and guesswork.

“Ace is going to cause a few fistfights in war rooms,” a scout said.

That evening, Bailey wore black thick-framed glasses and a gray suit as he sat next to Harper for the lottery results in a ballroom. Two rows behind them were Cooper, Knight and Branche. Dallas overcame 1.8% odds to win the top pick. San Antonio was No. 2, Philadelphia No. 3.

“Wow,” Bailey said. “That’s crazy.”

The next morning, prospects negotiated on-court gauntlets of orange cones and green lasers. Vertical jumps and sprint times were recorded. From the front row, Branche and Williamson recorded Bailey’s sessions with their phones.

Bailey shot well, but his last attempt was left-handed from beyond the arc. It struck the side of the backboard and bounced away. He signaled for an alley-oop, which he finished forcefully before bounding off. Work remained.

“Get my body right for the next level so I can be able to take that bump,” he says. “Get more consistent.”

One reporter addressed him as “Dylan”; he replied, “Dylan?” Another asked whether this was the most time he spent around “Cooper”?

“Cooper who?” Bailey said. “Flagg? I thought you meant my agent!”

Cooper considered the odds of his guiding a lottery pick for the second time in five years. His agency has 36 clients, the majority of which in high school or college, and his son Sharife is now playing in France after a year in China. Von Gontard, who also represents Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter, will be Bailey’s agent of record since he is certified by the NBPA.

“Had I made it, I don’t think I’d be in this position to take everything serious,” Cooper says. “To know that if you mess up over here, whether it is grades or the judicial system, you can’t get over there. You can’t cut corners.”

Rivals reminisced, too. Derik Queen, a 6-foot-10 forward from Baltimore, recalled the first time he saw Bailey dunk. After all the probing of him, Bailey had questions.

“Who was I playing?” Bailey said. “What color was I wearing? Blue? Were there three courts? Two courts? Was it in Atlanta? Suwanee?”

“You just dunked on that guy so bad,” Queen said. “It was like, Mmmph! Mmmph!”

“Was me and Dylan playing together?” Bailey said. “Was it 10th grade?”

“I think so,” Queen said. “Maybe 11th.”

“I’ve dunked on a lot of n---as, fool!” Bailey said. “Be more specific!”

Finish

Demetrius Bumpass, 31, works the third shift in the finish department at Chattanooga’s Volkswagen plant. He clocks in at 10 p.m. and punches out at 6:30 a.m. When he got the gig, he envisioned painting vehicles.

“But they were like, ‘Nah, we got machines for that,’” he says. “So basically I do touchups.”

Colleagues call him “Picasso,” and in January, Bumpass captured Bailey’s grace across a 30 x 40 canvas. He used acrylics to paint an ace of spades card in the background with Bailey readying to dunk in the fore. When Cooper saw it, he told Bumpass to add swooshes to Bailey’s sneakers.

“I wasn’t even thinking,” Bumpass says. “I had to recreate the shoe.”

Bumpass wondered if he could get a Bailey jersey.

“The agent, he kind of gave me a choice,” Bumpass says. “Either the jersey or get posted on Bailey’s Instagram story for 24 hours. I was like, OK, bite the bullet and go with the post so more people can see my work.”

Bumpass paused.

“Ace found that lane of getting to a next level,” he says. “I can’t even tell you the last time someone from Chattanooga got to where he’s about to go. Good for him to be out of Chattanooga.”

Local rapper Kentrell Deon released a song “Ace Bailey” and wore his McDonald’s All American and Rutgers jerseys in the video. A mural featuring Bailey was added to a wall on a rusty nail of a block where elders maintain easy rhythms on rocking chairs and youths punch heavy bags hanging on porches. Outside Dalewood Middle School, the basketball court was painted with “AB” inside the center circle. Diamonds and 4s also dot the court.

“No shortcuts to getting a street named for you,” Lacy says.

He caught two catfish recently with family and was back at McEachern for graduation. He remains in touch with Boyd-Buchanan’s principal, FaceTiming her unannounced.

“We go out sometimes in Atlanta and have a driver,” Dozier says. “Somebody said the other day when we were going to get fitted for suits, ‘Man, why don’t you have your driver carry a gun just in case for you guys.’ And Ace said, ‘I don’t want no guns around me because I believe in the safety God gave me.’ I was shocked. Most kids think they need guns to survive.”

Those closest to Bailey still call him “Oooowee” and regale each other with memories of his unbridled energy as a boy. Recently, he inspired the 6-foot-4 Lacy to play in the Senior Olympics. As Bailey approaches the green room and generational wealth, she notes a debt.

“Ooooweee owes me a game of one-on-one,” she says. “I’ll be waiting.”