After you graduate from college, a lot of kids who go into the real world and get their first job spend days dreaming about what it would be like if they could just go back.
The hours needed to be there. The stress. The ever-hanging axe above your head that could come down at any moment.
Who wouldn’t want to go back to your glory days when everything seemed to move a little bit slower, and everything tasted a little bit sweeter?
Well, Amari Bailey isn’t imagining what it would feel like.
He’s trying to do it.
And his job? It’s the NBA.
Unlike other pros who never played a professional game for their team while trying to regain NCAA eligibility, Bailey was drafted in the second round from UCLA and played 10 games for the Charlotte Hornets in the 2023-24 season.
He has scored actual points in an NBA game.
Although his stint in the pros didn’t last long, tumbling down the ecosystem into the G League, Bailey is still only 21 years old.
“Right now I’d be a senior in college,” Bailey said to ESPN in an exclusive interview. “I’m not trying to be 27 years old playing college athletics. No shade to the guys that do. That’s their journey.”
He explained that he was a kid when he decided to turn professional, and he’s learned a lot over the past two years about what he wants in life.
After the wave of professionals that never touched an NBA floor during the regular season and international stars making it over to college, Bailey wants to be the next person to push the boundaries of what is acceptable in today’s college basketball world.
“It’s not a stunt,” Bailey said to ESPN. “I’m really serious about going back. I just want to improve my game, change the perception of me, and just show that I can win.”
One of Bailey’s arguments for being allowed to return is that he only made a little over $500,000 under his pro contract. And with NIL players such as AJ Dybantsa at BYU rumored to be getting paid multiple times that salary, Bailey believes that his getting paid shouldn’t deter him from being allowed to return to play college basketball.
Regardless of any program that welcomes Bailey, they will need a waiver signed by the NCAA to allow him back onto a college basketball court.
Newsweek