Ace Bailey did just about everything the Utah Jazz could have reasonably asked from him as a rookie.He played 72 games, started 61 of them and averaged 13.8 points, 4.2 rebounds and 1.8 assists in 27.6 minutes. He got better as the season went along, eventually earning NBA All-Rookie Second Team honors.Normally, that makes this exercise pretty easy.Give the former No. 5 overall pick more minutes. Give him more shots. Let him make more mistakes. See how much further this thing can go.Utah’s problem — and it’s a pretty good problem to have — is that there are suddenly a lot of other players deserving of those opportunities.Keyonte George averaged 23.6 points last season. Lauri Markkanen is still going to get his. Jaren Jackson Jr. is entering his first full season with the Jazz after arriving at the trade deadline.Then there’s Darryn Peterson, whom Utah selected No. 2 overall in June after he averaged 20.2 points during his lone season at Kansas.So … now what?That’s probably the most interesting part of Bailey’s second season.Nothing about Utah’s offseason made him less important. The Jazz didn’t spend the No. 5 pick on Bailey, watch him make an All-Rookie team and suddenly decide 12 months later that they’re done figuring out what he can become.They’ve just added more players worth figuring out at the same time.And that makes the usual Year 2 formula a little difficult.There are only so many possessions in an NBA game. George needs the ball. Peterson will need it. Markkanen and Jackson certainly aren’t going to spend the season standing around while Utah conducts an Ace Bailey development experiment.Bailey is going to have to find his opportunities somewhere in between.That doesn’t mean turning him into a spot-up shooter or asking him to disappear whenever somebody else has the ball. Utah still needs to give Bailey enough offensive responsibility to learn what it actually has in him.It just doesn’t have to hand him that responsibility automatically.Jazz assistant Jason Terry essentially said as much earlier this offseason.”Year two will still be more development and growing,” Terry told Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson. “But he’ll definitely hopefully earn more responsibility out there on the floor with minutes.”That word — earn — probably explains Bailey’s role better than anything else.Terry said Bailey received more responsibility during his rookie season as he learned and developed. Year 2 can work the same way, even if the circumstances around him are considerably different.Give Bailey opportunities and see what he does with them. Let him create when they’re there. Make him prove he can remain useful when they aren’t. Ask more of him defensively, where another step forward would make finding minutes considerably easier regardless of which scorers share the floor with him.Then adjust accordingly.Maybe Bailey eventually demands enough touches that Utah has to rethink the hierarchy. Maybe Peterson does. Maybe George’s breakout continues and
Content Source: Yahoo News
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