Report: Ace Bailey bizarrely cancels pre-draft workout with Sixers

Polarizing Rutgers wing Ace Bailey has cancelled his workout with the Sixers, according to ESPN's Jonathan Givony.

In doing so, Bailey is the only US-based prospect to have not visited an NBA team despite the draft standing one week away.

Per Givony, Bailey was expected to fly to Philadelphia ahead of this weekend to have dinner with the team's front office and go through a workout.

Givony's report claimed that this decision would not prevent the Sixers from selecting Bailey with the third overall pick on June 25:

The team has scouted him extensively throughout the season, as he plays his college basketball at nearby Rutgers in Piscataway, New Jersey, and interviewed him in Chicago at the NBA Draft Combine. The team will have final discussions on who to select in the coming week and is unlikely to move down in the draft order next Wednesday, sources said.

Bailey and his camp have done themselves no favors in the pre-draft process. According to Givony, they've made it clear that they believe the Rutgers freshman to be a top-3 player in this class. They want to be drafted to a team that provides enough minutes and usage to make it easy to envision stardom in Bailey's future.

Jason Dumas of 6ABC added this:

Source: Ace Bailey was seeking a promise from the Sixers prior to committing to a meeting. That meeting appears to be unlikely now.

As I reported on Friday, there has been a lot of posturing for weeks now with the Sixers unsuccessfully making attempts to get Ace in the building

— Jason Dumas (@JDumasReports) June 19, 2025

Can someone explain the logic in expecting a promise from a team without visiting them?

I can't say I know how much of this is driven by the 18-year-old Bailey, himself (a league source with ties to a prominent agency did condemn Bailey's representation in a text message immediately after Givony's story broke). But it smells a lot like amateurish representation. Let's review:

• Refusal to work out for any team in the pre-draft process.
• Declaration that your client is one of the three best players in the class, while refusing to work out for teams.
• Not understanding the optics of seeking "a clear pathway to stardom" and how that could cast the prospect in an unflattering light.
• Wanting a promise from a franchise before agreeing to visit them.
• This level of polish in an interview at the combine.
• No functional website in the year 2025.

This would all be a different story if Bailey was widely believed to be one of the three best prospects in the class. Our write-up of Bailey's offering largely came to the same conclusion that most other credible analysis has: tantalizing offensive player who needs significant development in both functional skills and basketball intelligence. He's mostly a theoretical prospect at this point.

But with Bailey being as divisive a prospect as he is, it's concerning - for both whoever drafts him and the young man, himself - that this start to his life in the NBA may be best described as delusional.