ACE BAILEY: Is It TIME for the Utah Jazz to UNLOCK Their Rookie Star? Patient Approach EXPLAINED!

ACE BAILEY: Is It TIME for the Utah Jazz to UNLOCK Their Rookie Star? Patient Approach EXPLAINED!

Is it time to unleash Ace Bailey? Next on Locked on Jazzum. You are Locked on Jazz, your daily podcast on the Utah Jazz, part of the Locked On podcast network. Your team every day. How are you? I’m David Lock, radio voice of Utah Jazz, Jazz MBA insider. This is Locked on Jazz, your daily podcast on the Utah Jazz, giving you insight, expertise, geeky numbers, and hopefully making it way better to be a Jazz fan each and every day. Thank you so much for making Locked on Jazz your first listen of the day. And thank you for making Locked On the number one sports podcast network on today’s show. It’s a Monday, so we’ll do trends Monday. Oklahoma City. Seriously, dude. So, let’s mellow out a little bit. Holy cow. We’ll get to them. Kings and Rockets games. A tale of two different games. Why? We’ll dig into that. We will open today with is it time to unleash one Ace Bailey. Today’s show is brought to you in part by FanDuel. Right now, new customers can get just $5 if your bet wins or with bet just $5. If your bet wins, you’ll get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. Head to fanduel.com to get started. Thank you very much to the everydayers. You’re the greatest. Coming up, I think next Monday, a little everyday announcement for a good little new program. Hopefully, you’ll love it. Um, hope you’re great. Hope you had a good Thanksgiving and everything. Just kind of sending my sending my my thoughts to you. We’re all a little community. We’ve done this together for a long time. So, um, I was just texting with our director of video production whose father passed away like the week before Thanksgiving. And so, obviously sometimes it’s not great. So, I kind of think I’m sending both of both of all of you a little bit of support for those who Thanksgiving’s not great and wasn’t great this year. And those of you that are, thanks for being a part of it and being with us this time of year. All right. Ace Bailey is really good. Um, the Flashes are there. I said to Ron on the call the other night, you know, he’s getting better because it’s not like a big deal every time he makes a play. You now just expect it. He’s really good. Um he’s ungodly offensively talented. Uh he made a play yesterday on the right baseline, gets off balance, loses his footing, turns, fades, rises, and that’s the real word, rises up over the top, and takes a shot from 15 feet. He’s probably two feet above the defender. Um, I don’t know that he’ll always want to jump this high on all his jump shots, but he extends fully and if there’s a picture of it out there, like he is up over the top. This kid’s going to be able to get his shot anytime he wants. That’s actually been the most eye opening thing even from I think think the first summer league game he played. Ron Boon said to me, “Oh, wow.” on like just a pullup jigs like, “Oh, he can get that anytime he wants.” Um, so let’s talk about what we’re doing with Ace Bailey. Will had a really good, and maybe we’ll use it on Will’s Wednesday answer the other day about being very patient and very deliberate with how you’re feeding. And there’s two things here. One, you and I and Will, he openly admitted, and probably Austin and Justin Xanic and Ryan Smith and everybody that matters and every coach and all of us fans want to see all of Ace Bailey right now. All of it. Like I’m I’ll admit like five minutes left in the game right last night I said like okay let’s just give him a call play for him every time that’s good for us immediately it’s probably not the right answer long term this is a long game we don’t really care if Ace Bailey is at all cylinders on December 15th of this year we do really care that Ace Bailey is the best he can possibly be October 15th of 2027. It’s kind of if you’re putting a timeline on the Ace Bailey game, we need him in the beginning of his third year to be peeking out. That’s the year in which these are high standards. So do not un don’t like don’t underestimate what I’m saying here. But the third year is when Kevin Durant became an MVP candidate and the third year is when Jason Tatum became an all-star. Okay? And those are probably the models that we’re talking about. Um, and probably more on the Tatum than the Dr. And probably one of the three greatest scorers in the history of the game. So, what really really matters is where Ace Bailey is. And I think we have to remember this. I have to Okay, let me just say I’m not going to speak for you. I have to remember that what matters with Ace Bailey is where he is October 15th of 2027. I need that. Thank you. Please remind me all the time. We like need to put a little sign up on my board. I have like all my motivational signs over here and um like I need to put October 15th of 2027. So Will’s really interesting about this. He seems to have the perspective. He has the contract extension. This is why his contract extension mattered. He has his perspective. And so they’re being very deliberate and they’re patiently feeding him little pieces. And the fact is, you know, Will said it the other day, confidence is a lot of this. Like, we do not want confidence is a real thing. These are humans. We do not want to over push Ace and ask too much out of him and have him suddenly lose confidence and never get it back. We may be seeing that, frankly, with Cody. Like, it’s going to be interesting to see if Cody can bounce back from that rookie year. Maybe talent-wise he can’t. Maybe mentally he can. He’s super smart. So, it’s going to be interesting to see, but we may have overdipped Cody in my terminologies. And Ace has been great. As a starter, he’s shooting a remarkable 53% from the field and 41% from three. He’s averaging 14 points, three rebounds, two assists. He plays from 10 to 25 ft out. And as he’s the big next step for him is going to be when he actually starts to play from zero to 10 feet. Right now, everything’s from probably from 15t out. He when he drives to the basket, he has no idea what he’s reading. He has no idea what speed he’s going. He has no idea how he’s getting over people. He He’s all instinct right now. His instincts are awesome because his talent is incredible. He even said it last night postgame. He’s like, “Well, it’s God-given talent. I just kind of do it.” Like, it’s amazing. Let’s look at the comps of when do you unleash Ace Bailey? So, there’s the Kevin Durant model and Kevin Oklahoma and what Seattle did with Kevin Durant. Let’s remember that Seattle with PJ Carissimo on a on a really poor team. They did not have a Lowry Markin. They did not have a um they did not have anyone on that roster. And Durant on opening night took 22 shots and played and second night of the year he played 40 minutes and took 23 shots. Like that team was the beginning of like major league. There was a major league tank by Oklahoma City, the movie, to make sure that they got that Klay Bennett got his people there. The the player who played the second most amount of minutes on that team was Earl Watson. Okay. The third the second leading scoreer on that team was Chris Wilcox. This team was horrific. So, they had no choice and they just unloaded and threw Kevin Durant into the deep end. They had him play shooting guard. They won 20 games that year. They threw him in the deep end. they were the worst offensive team in the league and they just kind of let him do whatever he did. They just didn’t want him to get touched and so they threw him with the defense. A better example, and it’s the Jazz have studied two players. They’ve studied Jason Tatum and they’ve studied Kevin Durant is Jason Tatum’s team because Jason Tatum was probably the third best offensive player on that team. Kyrie Irving was the best. They had Al Horford who’s probably was the best player, but not the best. And then Jaylen Brown and Jason Tatum were at J and Jaylen Brown you recall was 21 at this point and Jason Tatum was 19. So the it’s probably similar that Lowry Markin was Kyrie Irving taking 18 shots a game. Jaylen Brown was Kee George still developing into kind of his own players in his second year not his third. And then there was Jason Tatum in the opening months of the season. And Jason Tatum’s usage rate, so that’s percentage of possessions while that while that were he used while he was on the floor, was at 17 or 18%. Guess what Ace Bailey’s is? 17 or 18%. It’s right, very similar. Then in December, beginning to show a little bit more, they moved his usage rate in December and January to 19%. And then in March and April, Jason Tatum’s usage rate went to 23%. Okay, that’s probably the model here. So, as much as I would like to start seeing five or 6 7 8 or 9 10 11 12 23 plays a night run for Ace Bailey, it’s probably not what’s best for October 15th of 2027. God patience sucks. As a starter, Ace Bailey is a remarkable 53% from the floor, 41% from three, and his usage rate is 19%. So Tatum’s usage rate in his opening month was 17. In November and December it kind of moved to 18. In January it moved to 19%. And then in March and April it moved to 22%. And interestingly at that point Jason Tatum’s productivity dropped. He started shooting 42 43 44%. And really dropped. Tatum I think was amazing. I don’t have it in front of me. I can find it very quickly. Tatum I believe was 48% as a rookie and 44% from three. Like Jason Tatum was amazingly efficient coming and he in the book on him if you recall coming out of Duke was very similar to that of of Ace Bailey in that he was thought to be kind of a mid-range player, not going to be very efficient and things like that. And he ends up shooting 48% 43 or 44% from three as a rookie. I mean Tatum was great as a second or third best player. We’re seeing something fairly similar from Ace right now. I mean, in the month of November, Ace Bailey is 51% from the field and 39% from three with a usage rate at 19%. It’s pretty awesome. And it’s probably when do we unleash him? Well, Will likes to talk about 10ame windows. So, I think if you go look at the first 10 games of the year with AC probably took, you know, and now he’s taking a few more shots and it’s probably going to be very slight and incremental. As much as you and I and Will Hardy too want to accelerate this faster, there’s no value. There’s only downside. He’s getting plenty of experience right now. But if you go look his first 10 games of the year, he took seven shots a game and played 19 minutes a night coming off the illness. And we’re about to hit the next 20. and he’s suddenly playing 25 minutes a night and taking 10 shots a night and it’s going to just go to 11 and 12. And I would guess that in March and April, we’re going to see Ace Bailey with a usage rate from about 19% to 23%. Very similar to what happened with Jason Tatum. So the answer on when to unleash Ace Bailey is probably not tonight. As much as we would all like to see it, as fun as it would be, the answer is this is about October 15th of 2027 and so unleashing Ace Bailey is probably post Allstar Break. Patience sucks. How is it possible we were so good Friday and so bad yesterday? Next on Locked on Jazz, Monday edition of Locked on Jazz, brought to you by our good friends over at Murdoch Chevy. Fun things are happening at Murdoch Chevy right now in Woodscross. There’s also a Murdoch Chevy in Logan. So, if you are up there, make sure you check it out. If you are going to head over and look at either any of the cars or trucks at any of these locations, why don’t you let us give you the locked on VIP treatment? Because if you’re looking for that 0% for three years on the 2025 Silverado 1500 or the 2026 Equinox, then this is the time. If the 2026 Silverado 1500 crew cap and 0% again kicks into you, well then this is the time. Head over to Murdochevy and Woodscross. Or if you’re looking to do it up in Logan, email me first at dlock09gmail.com. That’s dlock09gmail.com so that we can give you the VIP treatment you deserve over at murdochevy. The Murdoch’s 90 plus years in Utah. Chevy is Americana. The combination is perfection. Make sure you grab it. Murdoch Chevy. Today’s show is also brought to you by our friends over at Price Picks. Fun time of the year to get involved with everything involving prize picks. 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Use the code locked on NBA to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. That’s code lock on NBA to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. Prize picks. It’s good to be right. Thank you so much for making Lockdown Jazz your first listen of the day. Thank you for making Lockdown the number one sports podcast network. Woohoo. Boy were we good on Friday. Boy, did we suck last night. How is that possible? Opponent. Honestly, opponent. And if you kind of look at what we’re doing this year and what our record is against different types of teams and things like that, like that’s the answer. We are very opponent dependent right now. I think part of it is that the best teams are physical and a very simple term. is like coaches talk about it all the time, but the best teams are physical and get it into us and know what we’re going to run and are well prepared and we can’t run our stuff freely and then we really kind of fall apart. Against above 500 teams right now we’re two and 10 and against below 500 teams were four and three. So, Sacramento, I think the performance against Sacramento that the Jazz had is a larger indictment on Sacramento. And the performance the Jazz had against Houston is a larger tribute to who Houston is than anything about the Jazz. We’re a two and a half player offensive team right now. Everybody else we’re playing either has some level of deficiency or item that they’re trying to figure out. And I think the um I think what we’re seeing is, you know, Ke Well, Keante last night just had I you know, the illness had to be that was the worst night of his NBA career. Like there’s just no other way to say it. Like he didn’t score and he had eight turnovers. Um, and tonight I think today is fascinating like how does everybody bounce back tonight and Lowry is in the doldrums a little bit physically being asked to be the number one option. Will said after the game yesterday that his balance is not quite right on his shot and the and teams like Lowry cannot get his own shot. So teams know where he’s coming from, how he’s getting shots, and they’re in on it. But it’s not every team. And it’s just really telling. Like if you look, we played Houston, that’s a great defensive team. He gets 12 shots. We played Oklahoma City, who’s a great defensive team and super physical, he got eight shots. Played Sacramento, who’s out there lolly gagging, hating each other, and then he got 23 shots. Well, he hit the Warriors, who are pretty average, he got 19 shots. He played the Lakers that are kind of slow and not, he got 19 shots. I’m not sure that Lowry dictates the amount of shots he gets on a given night. I think the opponent probably does. the other like elite level defensive teams that we like the first time we played Sacramento, he got 23 shots. Like there’s something to this. Like we played Charlotte, who’s not a very good defensive team, Lowry got 28 shots. Played Boston, he got 17. Played Minnesota, he gets 14 and 15 in back-to-back games. We could probably look at Lowry against top 10 defensive teams versus top bottom and it’s probably really difference. And that probably is the difference. There’s a lot of probables here, so a lot of caveats. Not a very definitive statement by me. Let’s be honest. I’ll say it definitively. If you look at Lowry’s performances against top 10 defenses, in contrast that to when he plays a bottom 10 defense or a middle defense, he’s not able to get all his own shot off. And that’s where that deficiency shows up really loudly. And why Loudley is awesome, but probably a number two or number three on a good team, not a number one. Someone’s got to be able to go create a shot. But if you look at I don’t like I’m just doing this off the top of my head, not at actual rankings. I kind of have in my head who I think the top 10 defensive teams are in the NBA. They’re Houston, Oklahoma City, Minnesota. I would think Detroit’s probably in there somewhere. Um Miami we haven’t played yet. Toronto we haven’t played yet. Dallas is actually still really good defensively. Um and Golden State probably deserves to be in that group and probably Orlando there. That’s the kind of off the top of my head like running that that’s probably So if we look at who have we played that’s a top 10 defensive team with Lowry this year we’ve played Boston who he got 17 shots off Detroit he did get 22 off so to his credit uh against Minnesota he got 14 and 15 against Oklahoma City he got eight and against Houston he got 12 against Golden State which is a pretty good defensive team he got 19 and yet then you go look at the others 25 against Atlanta 33 against Chicago, 21 against the Lakers, 23 against Sacramento, 23 against Sacramento, 32 against Phoenix, 20 against Phoenix, 28 against Charlotte. Yeah, it’s a really big difference. Really big difference. So, I think the swing of performances we pro it’s has to do with the opponent. We’re we’re actually a really good litmus test right now on whether somebody’s engaged or not. We run great offensive stuff. We’re very creative in the things we run. We do a bunch of interesting things. They’re not. Our offense creates our offense creates most of our offense, if that makes sense. Our structure creates most of our shots. And so therefore, if you blow up our structure and you’re physically good enough to blow up our structure, we’re in a lot of trouble because we don’t have a lot of guys that can make one-on-one plays. I think that’s kind of what we saw between those two nights. Sacramento, it’s an indictment on Sacramento. What a holy smokes. The scary thing to me, Sacramento terrifies me. As a fan of the Utah Jazz and the NBA, Sacramento terrifies me. Sacramento in 2023, April of 2023. That is 29 months ago, two and a like not long ago, right? Step, they play game seven at home. They’re like everyone’s favorite thing. And Steph Curry goes for 50 in a one of the great single performances of all time. And Sacramento loses at home after coming off a game six win on April 28th like two nights before in which they go into Golden State and win by 20. And it is like it is bonkers. Oh my gosh. Sacramento is the next team. Sabonis and Fox and this team is so ready. They’ve got young Keegan Murray coming and now they’re talking about like Keegan Murray as though he’s like the future of their franchise. He’s not that. He has zero self-creation to his game. He’s a nice player, but he’s not that. And you have Demar De Rozan who clearly is not on board. And Zack Lavine who seems to be emotionless. Oh my gosh, what a disaster. But you can build that thing up and get to there 28 months ago and be where oh my a perilous like like tale of terror of what might happen if we do this all right and then it can go that wrong that fast now they’re probably culpable in some way and you hope that our ownership is not going to do stuff like that but wow terrifying I tell you terrifying Trends Monday is next on Locked on Jazz. 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That’s where live betting with FanDuel, watching the game, whether it’s the NFL, the NBA, all taking place get whether a receiver gets hot, a shooting guard gets hot, you can play it with live betting in game as the game starts and shifts, you can make the move during the ball game. Live spreads, money lines adjust instantly. Player props update as a guy heats up, next touchdown, next basket, next drive, next slam dunk, whatever it might be. So, if you want to be right in the middle of the action this season, visit fanuel.com and place your NFL live bets all season long. FanDuel, the game moves fast, so can you. Trends Monday time. Tuesday, we will do late game watch. I had some good late game watches and there’s been some fun stuff. I got a bunch of games to catch up on today. Uh the NBA is really fun right now. All right. What we look at each week right now to give us kind of an idea of where the NBA stands and gets us ready for the week and let’s just look at kind of is the first thing we look at is the last 10 games by all teams and then we look at the last two weeks which gives us the micro trend inside of it. This is a little more fun than the last time because now we have enough games. So Oklahoma City’s 10 and0 and the sucks and there’s nothing worse than Oklahoma City just being better than everyone every second and seemingly unstoppable and they’ve done everything right and it’s brutal. Ah, so Oklahoma City is the number one team in the NBA over the last 10 games. Houston is two. This is pretty fascinating. Orlando is three without Paulo Bonero. I I’m not surprised by this. If you’ve been listening to the show, I I don’t know. I even said when they signed him to his max deal, like I don’t like it, but I don’t know what they’re supposed to do otherwise. Denver is four. Toronto is five. That’s interesting. And they get NBA Cup play. Detroit is six, Boston is seven, New York is eight, the Lakers are nine, and Minnesota’s kind of settled themselves. They just can’t close games is 10. So, the best teams in the NBA are really, this is always it. The 20th game of the season kind of just stop where you are. Look at the standings. And we’ll probably do this tomorrow or Wednesday. And that’s where we’re sitting. Those are the teams, the 10 teams on the bottom right now are Washington, Sacramento, Brooklyn, New Orleans, Portland has really slid, Chicago, and then Utah is the sixth worst team in the NBA. Clippers and Hornets right there. So that again, separation there. Milwaukee doesn’t mean to be there, but everybody else seems to be kind of there. The number one offense in the NBA the last 10 games is Denver. Number two is Houston. Number three is Boston. Joe Missoula, what a job he’s doing there. That’s this is where I love this trends. It’s like you see a thing like that. Like how is Boston without Jason Tatum having traded Drew Holiday, gotten off Chris Porzingis, how are they possibly the third best offense in the NBA? Derek White, Pton Pritchard getting used to their roles. Another one where I love the trends. Orlando fourth best offense in the NBA the last 10 games without Paulo Bunker was an inefficient ballhog who just never makes plays for Steve. No, I’m just I’m overplaying it, but like he really does stop their offense and very rarely do people get things off of him. Uh Lakers are five, Oklahoma City is six. That’s LeBron coming back a little bit. New York is seven, Detroit is eight, Spurs are nine, and Atlanta is 10 without Trey Young. Quinn’s kind of working his magic there. We’re the 12th best offense in the NBA over the last 10 games. Teams that cannot score right now, Sacramento. That’s incredible that Sacramento can’t. And the thing is like Doug Christiey’s preaching defense, defense, defense. And like they can’t score. Dallas is 29, Philadelphia’s 28, Washington, New Orleans, Indiana, and Brooklyn all having a hard time scoring. Not a big surprise. Best defensive team in the NBA over the last 10 games is Oklahoma City by six points over the rest of the number two team. And Oklahoma City’s defense over the last 10 games is 12 points better than league average per 100 possessions. It’s stupid. Toronto is two, which is interesting because that is not a team I would have thought would have been very good defensively. Minnesota with Rudy clicking in is three. Houston is four. Orlando is five. Not surprising. Miami is six. None of these are surprising. Seven is Cleveland. Eight is Golden State. And nine is Dallas. Those are the best defensive teams in the league. The only one that might be a little surprising is some of the teams that might have slipped, but nothing too significant. Washington’s worst in the NBA, worst the second worst in the NBA last 10 games defensively. Clippers, Portland 27. For all that pressure and everything else just not coming together, Denver 26, Brooklyn 25, Charlotte 24, New Orleans 23. So again, this is really where the season begins to settle in and there aren’t a lot of big surprises right now of what’s um taking place. The last let’s go to the last two weeks. The number one point differential is Oklahoma City, though. Houston’s right behind them. The Lakers are three. Orlando is the best team in the East over the last two weeks. I mean, this really interesting. Miami right behind them. Keep continue to play well. They’re doing it defensively. I’ll show you in a second. Then New York and Minnesota. The Minnesota one’s worth keeping an eye on. They’ve been to the Eastern Western Conference finals two years in a row. We’re all talking about Houston. We’re all talking about Den. We’re all talking about the Lakers. We kind of forgotten about Minnesota. They’re terrible finishing games right now. Terrible, but they’re so good for the first 44. The other one is since Zack Ed’s come back, Memphis is now the eighth best team in the NBA over the last two weeks. And Ed’s been great. Uh we’re the lowest last two weeks we’re 30th in the NBA. Brooklyn 29, Washington 28, Sacramento 27, Portland 26, Dallas 25. Wow. Western Conference. Hello. And Chicago after that. Number one offense in the NBA, the Lakers. Since LeBron’s come back, the Lakers offense is a 132 offensive rating. This is where I like Trends Monday. Little micro trend right there. Lakers offense, they’re 5-0 in their last five games. They’re 132 offensive rating. That is a sick number. League average, by the way, is 115. Denver is 128. Orlando again at 125. Boston at 123. New York the fifth best offensive team. Oklahoma sixth and Detroit seventh. The teams that cannot score right now. Dallas over the last five games is the their last seven games is the worst. Sacramento, Utah, Brooklyn, Portland, Washington, and Indiana. Best defense in the NBA, no surprise, Oklahoma City. But number two, right with them is Miami. So Miami over the last seven games defending at the same level as Oklahoma City as is Houston. Then Toronto five, Minnesota at four, Toronto five. Memphis with Zach Edi is six defensively. There it is. Indiana defensively. Rick Carlo has finally got him to defend at seven. Teams not defending. Utah’s the worst in the NBA. Denver right after that. Brooklyn, Clippers, Charlotte, Washington, and Boston. So trends Monday, pretty interesting. Orlando, big story there. What’s going on? Lakers offense with LeBron. What’s taking place there? No surprises on the bottom other than that the Clippers are actually bad, which we probably learned on opening night. That is Locked on Jazz today. Thanks so much for tuning in. Greatly appreciate you. If you’re coming to the game tonight, bring noise cancelling headphones, stop by Section 7, get the little code. We’ll have you all set up for that. Uh we have a lag free broadcast. It’s Arena Cast inside the arena. Glad to have you aboard on that. It is locked on Jazz. Thanks so much for tuning in. We now send you the first ever national 247 NBA channel, Locked on NBA on YouTube. Check out Locked on NBA on audio. Game night every game, every night.

Utah Jazz fans eagerly await Ace Bailey’s breakout—should Will Hardy unleash his star rookie or continue the patient approach? With Bailey showing flashes of elite, Kevin Durant-level shot creation and efficiency, the franchise faces a long-term development question: maximize immediate returns or build toward sustained October 2027 success? Bailey’s usage and performance echo rookie seasons of NBA stars like Jason Tatum, setting up strategic comparisons and future projections for the Jazz.

David Locke analyzes Bailey’s impact, Lauri Markkanen’s struggles as the number one offensive option, and Keyonte George’s recent performance swings. Tune in for insight on the Jazz’s offense, team trends against elite NBA defenses, and the roster’s evolving identity. With a breakdown of Utah’s playoff potential and the challenges posed by top contenders like Houston and Oklahoma City, this episode spotlights the decisions that will shape the Jazz’s trajectory—will patience pay off, or is it time for a bold move?

0:00 – Ace Bailey Development
14:44 – Jazz Performance: Kings vs. Rockets
24:30 – NBA Trends Analysis

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