After a promising high school career and a single season run at Rutgers that featured more good than bad, Ace Bailey saw his stock take a tumble at the worst possible time heading into the 2025 NBA Draft, going from the consensus No. 3 prospect in this year's class to a player outside of some Top 5s rankings.

Now granted, some of that has more to do with talent evaluators getting their claws into the class' prospects with all of the tape officially on the books. Bailey's shot selection, when coupled with his very selfish brand of basketball, led some to wonder if he'd ever be able to develop into a balanced offensive player, assuming he would even accept a 3-and-D role on a team with other stars.

And yet, Bailey and his camp deserve plenty of the blame too, with his unwillingness to work out with teams, when coupled with a steady stream of rumors about teams he didn't want to play for, causing some fans, pundits, and presumably front office members to question his hit.

Discussing how Bailey and his manager, Omar Cooper, handled the situation on Road Trippin', ESPN's Kendrick Perkins blasted Sharife's father for giving his client bad advice, noting that youngsters with NBA aspirations shouldn't be taken advantage of by “vultures” who don't have their best intentions in mind.

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“I’m going to tell you what the problem is. The problem is we have these vultures that are preying on these kids. Preying on these kids as youngsters,” Perkins declared. “They are coming out, they’re seeing these youngsters in the eighth and nineth grade, taking them under their wing. Giving them money, paying their parents bills. Making sure the kids are straight, buying them their first cars, doing everything. Putting jewelry, clothes on their body. And all of a sudden with the kids and all those parents don’t realize, these vultures out there, they had a hidden agenda all along. They had a motive all along.”

Is Perkins on the money? That depends on the agent, but in the end, one thing he feels pretty strongly about is that Ace Bailey played this situation wrong, and he has no one to blame for that except the team he assembled.

“I don’t know the man, not the agent, because he’s not qualified. I don’t know him so I’m not going to speak on his name, but I will speak on his situation,” Perkins noted. “He has handled this wrong, completely wrong. You’re talking about an NBA that don’t need you brother.”