However, he did lose an element of surprise. That was the pre-workout conversation with Lebanon High coach Jim McDowell at 6:45 a.m. Nov. 20 in the school gym, where Bailey arrives at that time every day to hone his craft.
“I have to turn my body to deflect people and I have to bounce a little bit,” Bailey said of no longer using the left hand as an option when handling the ball and trying to get past defenders. “I don’t know how to explain it, but that bounce, that hesitation, some people fall for it, believe it or not. They certainly do.”
At that moment, Bailey looked at his coach and smiled. The biggest, easiest smile in Lebanon, a city of about 50,000 people 25 miles east of Nashville.
“If it’s a good defender, of course they’ll know I’m going in the right direction,” he said. “Do you feel me?”
They both laughed. They went to court. A few of Bailey’s teammates started trickling in as McDowell gave Bailey passes and Bailey turned them into whips.
The ball went from catch to shoot, from palm to fingertips to the air, in a flash, much like a Major League shortstop going from glove to pitch. It was smooth and natural in the left corner, where the 6-foot-4 Bailey often camps as a junior forward for the Blue Devils; the right side, where he either has to reach across his body to grab a pass or let it get all the way through, was more awkward. That was the focus of this training.
And there was no time to lose. The next day would be a big home game against Brentwood High, combined with a fundraiser for Bailey’s family. The next day a “Friendsgiving” with Bailey’s buddies and girlfriend, the Lebanese softball player Kyndall Robinson. Then two more games before Thanksgiving, then a break and hopefully a meeting with the Kentucky Wildcats for their Dec. 5 game against Gonzaga in Nashville — British star Otega Oweh, like North Carolina’s Seth Trimble, has befriended Bailey upon hearing of his exploits.
Somewhere in there, Bailey might have to go to the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt to empty his stomach. That’s been coming since his doctors told him on October 15 that the cancer had spread to his stomach and was untreatable. They told him he needed hospice care and to prepare for the end of his life.
But then they said the same thing almost a year ago when the cancer spread to his lungs. There are no more surprises, not for Bailey and the people who know him. There is only life that greets every day with gratitude and offers every day an opportunity to become better.
“His will to live and his zest for life — it’s really amazing,” says McDowell, who plays Bailey because he’s still effective enough to be in the rotation and who had him pegged as the most talented prospect in his class before his cancer diagnosis in June 2022.
“Mentally, I’ve been through all of this,” said Bailey’s mother, London Elie. “Depressed, I want to cry all the time and just break down. But I never had that chance because Jayden is always Jayden. You don’t see him getting down about this, so how can I be down? He’s running circles around everyone here.”
Basketball was passed on to Bailey, although he was more into baseball until he entered high school. Elie played at Division II Trevecca Nazarene in Nashville. Her sister, Icelyn McCarver, excelled at Middle Tennessee, finishing her career as an All-Sun Belt forward who scored 1,283 career points. Their father, Lester Elie, played for Northwestern State in Natchitoches, La., and was named to the program’s “Fab 50” of best players since the school moved to Division I in 1976.
Bailey had found his love for the game by the summer of 2022 — Kevin Durant is his favorite player and even though he’s a Blue Devil, North Carolina is his team — and was making waves on the AAU circuit. But pain in the left shoulder and a strange lump prompted an inspection. He was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, which, according to his oncologist, Dr. Scott Borinstein, is found in about 500 children in the United States each year. According to the American Cancer Society, that represents only 2-3 percent of childhood cancers.
The survival rate is about 60-70 percent if the species is captured before dispersal, and only 5 percent if not. The disease had not spread, so there was hope and understanding that this was an aggressive and potentially fatal form of cancer. Bailey’s left humerus was removed and replaced with a cadaver bone; Eighth grade basketball was replaced by 39 weeks of chemotherapy.
And that was the beginning of the ups and downs of remission and recurrence: the cancer first came back in the soft tissue at the back of the arm, requiring more surgery and radiation. But Bailey was back on the field and he wasn’t going to leave it no matter what.
“He is one of the most resilient and extraordinary young men I have ever met,” said Dr. Tracy Hills, medical director of pediatric palliative care at Monroe Carell and currently a close friend of Bailey and his family. “He hasn’t let anything get in the way of what he’s passionate about: basketball and his family.”
Things actually looked good for a long time, Bailey said, before last December. He said he was able to detect “a different energy” in Borinstein before the news of the most recent scan came out: the cancer was now in his lungs and inoperable. Even worse for Bailey, another tumor grew in his left arm and “teared through the nerves and muscles,” Elie said.
Of course he kept playing. But it was painful. During a post-Christmas tournament in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Elie and Bailey’s stepfather, Mickey Wright, kept a close eye on him as he sat on the bench in Lebanon. When he swayed, they gave him pills for the pain.
“I thought it was ibuprofen,” McDowell said.
It was morphine.
“I think he took 80 milligrams that day,” Elie said, much more than the prescribed limit, but that was the amount he needed.
The next few days were the worst since Bailey’s diagnosis. His arm and chest ached. His doctors recommended hospice care. He stayed in his room most of the time, his refuge for the times when he was unable to put on a smile and make others happy. At one point, Elie entered the room and saw these words written in marker on the mirror: “God, I’m listening.”
On December 31, 2024, she pressed her ear to the door and heard Bailey crying. The rest of the family gathered downstairs and Elie and Wright asked their four-year-old daughter Amira to pray for her big brother. She did so, asking God to “heal my bubba” and make “mommy stop crying.” Everyone got a much needed laugh.
Bailey woke up on January 1, 2025, feeling completely different. The pain had decreased. He had an appetite and a surge of energy. He asked if he could go to Dick’s to buy school clothes. Three days later he was at school when the semester started.
“It came out of nowhere, and I felt like it was nothing but God,” said Bailey, who recently had the Biblical passage Romans 8:28 tattooed on his right arm.
“I mean, it sounds crazy and I would say the same thing, I would say, ‘Come on, that’s just crazy,’” Wright said. “But we saw it happen. She prayed. And the next day he got up and was no longer in pain. It’s something you can’t explain. For me it’s a spiritual thing. I haven’t always been a religious man, but look at this. All his doctors, there’s no doctor who can explain what happened. They literally told us, ‘Call hospice, this is it.’ The next day he goes around and does what he wants to do.
One thing he wanted to do: take Robinson to the ball. The school made an exception and admitted him as a sophomore.
More relief came in August when, after a sleepless night and a visit to the emergency room, a surgeon amputated the left arm. McDowell took his children into the waiting room while Bailey recovered from surgery, and it was standing room only — the room was packed with Bailey’s friends and family members. When Bailey woke up, he was so excited that he did one-arm push-ups in celebration.
Five days later he was at school. A few days later he was in court despite being told to wait six to eight weeks. Things he previously took for granted, like zipping a jacket and spreading butter on a piece of bread, took time to relearn. But he couldn’t wait to get moving, catch and shoot without the left arm as a hindrance.
“Jayden does his own thing,” Hills said. “Every patient tells their own story and we have to let them take the lead. And often we are wrong. Right now we are following their signals.”
The people around Bailey took the news of October 15 hard. The cancer had reached the stomach. McDowell and his wife sat down with their daughters, ages 11 and 10, and told them their favorite Lebanon High Blue Devil might not be around much longer. The family cried together. The youngest, Bailey – who feels especially close to him because her first name is his last name – asked if she could go as him for Halloween.
He approved of her costume, which was completed by tucking her left arm into her shirt.
Immediately after the diagnosis, word around the school was that Bailey only had two weeks left. Teammate and best friend Jett Epperson called him as soon as he got the message.
“I’m like, ‘How are you? But I mean, how are you.’ Real doing?'” Epperson recalled. “That’s the thing about Jayden, I’ve never seen him sad, I’ve never even seen him slightly angry. He’s the best guy I’ve ever met, but this is definitely not easy.
Bailey’s answer for Epperson and others who asked: “Man, if I had two more weeks, I’d be in Bora Bora right now.”
“A lot of people want to say, ‘Why me?’ when things like this happen,” Bailey said. “But you can’t think like that. If you want the truth, I feel great now.”
The Brentwood game didn’t go well: the Bruins rolled behind 6-foot-4 big man Davis Cochran. Bailey started, but didn’t get many looks on the offensive end. He reached the line once and made both free throws. But he did flash on one sequence, blocking a shot in the defense, collecting the ball, bringing it up in transition and setting up a defender.
Bailey took advantage of his springy, hesitant movement and shook freely to the right. He came up and made a shot with perfect rotation. It just bounced off the edge just short. But there it was: the element of surprise. It may catch those unfamiliar with Bailey’s game.
A few weeks earlier, a man was in his house, an oxygen technician from a breathing apparatus company. He had to unload oxygen tanks for hospice care that was once again seen as unavoidable. After everything was unloaded, the man looked around and asked Elie, “Where is the patient?”
She pointed to the front door, to the sweaty, smiling 16-year-old who had just walked in after driving home from basketball practice.
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