LEBANON, Tenn. — Jayden Bailey cried when he got his left arm amputated in August, but they were not sad tears. This was long-awaited relief for the 16-year-old high school basketball player. This was addition by subtraction — gaining the ability to sleep through the night and move on the court without lugging around the cancer-filled, heavy and useless appendage.
He did lose some element of surprise, though. That was the pre-workout discussion with Lebanon High coach Jim McDowell at 6:45 a.m. on Nov. 20 in the school’s gym, where Bailey arrives every day at that time to hone his craft.
“I have to turn my body to ward people off and I have to have a little bounce,” Bailey said of no longer having 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 definitely do.”
That’s when Bailey looked at his coach and smiled. The biggest, easiest smile in Lebanon, a city of about 50,000, 25 miles east of Nashville.
“Of course, if it’s a good defender, they’re gonna know I’m going right,” he said. “You feel me?”
They both laughed. They took to the court. A few of Bailey’s teammates started to trickle in as McDowell fed Bailey passes and Bailey turned them into swishes.
The ball went from catch to shoot, from palm to fingertips to airborne, in a flash, not unlike a major league shortstop transferring from glove to throw. It was smooth and natural in the left corner, where the 6-foot-3 Bailey often camps out as a junior forward for the Blue Devils; the right side, where he either has to reach across his body to gather a pass or let it come all the way through, was clunkier. That was a focus of this workout.
And there was no time to waste. The next day would bring a big home game against Brentwood High, paired with a fundraiser for Bailey’s family. The day after that, a “Friendsgiving” with Bailey’s buddies and girlfriend, Lebanon softball player Kyndall Robinson. Then two more games before Thanksgiving, then a break and hopefully a hang with the Kentucky Wildcats before their Dec. 5 game against Gonzaga in Nashville — UK star Otega Oweh, like North Carolina’s Seth Trimble, has befriended Bailey upon learning of his exploits.
Somewhere in there, Bailey may need to pop in to Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt to get his stomach drained. That’s been coming since his doctors informed him on Oct. 15 that the cancer had spread to his stomach and was untreatable. They told him he would need hospice care and to prepare for the end of his life.
But then, they said the same thing nearly a year ago when the cancer spread to his lungs. There are no surprises anymore, not for Bailey or the people who know him. There is only life, greeted each day with gratitude, each day providing an opportunity to get better.
“His will to live and his zeal for life — it’s truly amazing,” said McDowell, who plays Bailey because he’s still effective enough to belong in the rotation, and who had him pegged as the most talented prospect in his class before the cancer diagnosis in June 2022.
“Mentally, I’ve been everywhere through all this,” said Bailey’s mother, London Elie. “Depressed, where I want to cry all the time and just break down. But I’ve never had that chance because Jayden is always Jayden. You don’t see him get down about this, so how can I be down? He’s out here running circles around everybody.”
Basketball was handed down to Bailey, though he liked baseball more until he got to middle 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, starred 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 that summer of 2022 — Kevin Durant is his favorite player and though he’s a Blue Devil, North Carolina is his team — and was emerging on the AAU circuit. But left shoulder pain and a strange lump prompted inspection. He was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, which is found in about 500 children each year in the United States, according to his oncologist, Dr. Scott Borinstein. That represents just 2-3 percent of childhood cancers, according to the American Cancer Society.
The survival rate is around 60-70 percent if caught before spreading, and as low as 5 percent if not. It had not spread, so there was hope along with an understanding that this was an aggressive and potentially fatal form of cancer. Bailey’s left humerus was removed and replaced by a cadaver bone; eighth-grade basketball was replaced by 39 weeks of chemotherapy.
Jayden Bailey and his mom, London Elie. (Joe Rexrode / The Athletic)
And that started the ups and downs of remission and recurrence — the cancer came back first in soft tissue on the back of the arm, requiring another surgery and radiation treatment. But Bailey was back on the court and he was not going to leave it, no matter what.
“He’s one of the most resilient and extraordinary young men I’ve ever met,” said Dr. Tracy Hills, medical director of pediatric palliative care at Monroe Carell and, at this point, a close friend to Bailey and his family. “He has not 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 could detect “a different energy” with Borinstein before the news from the most recent scan dropped: The cancer was in his lungs now, and it was inoperable. Worse for Bailey, another tumor was growing in his left arm and was “tearing through the nerves and muscle,” Elie said.
He kept playing, of course. But it was agonizing. At a post-Christmas tournament in Gatlinburg, Tenn., Elie and Bailey’s stepfather, Mickey Wright, kept a close eye on him as he sat on the Lebanon bench. When he waved, they would bring him pills to deal with 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’s how much he needed.
The next few days were the worst since Bailey was diagnosed. His arm and chest were hurting. His doctors recommended hospice care. He was mostly staying in his room, his refuge for the times when he wasn’t able to put on a smile and try to make others happy. At one point, Elie went into the room and saw these words written on the mirror in marker: “God, I’m listening.”
On Dec. 31, 2024, she pressed her ear against the door and heard Bailey weeping. The rest of the family gathered downstairs and Elie and Wright asked their 4-year-old daughter, Amira, to pray for her big brother. She did, asking that God “heal my bubba” and make it so “Mommy stops crying.” Everyone got a much-needed laugh.
Bailey woke up on Jan. 1, 2025, feeling completely different. The pain had receded. He had an appetite and a surge in energy. He asked to go to Dick’s to shop for school clothes. He was in school three days later when the semester began.
“It was out of nowhere, and I felt like that was nothing but God,” said Bailey, who recently got the Biblical passage Romans 8:28 tattooed on his right arm.
“I mean, it sounds crazy and I would say the same thing, I’d be like, ‘Come on, that’s just craziness,’” Wright said. “But we watched it happen. She prayed. And the very next day, he got up and was not in pain anymore. It’s something you can’t explain. To me, it’s a spiritual thing. I ain’t always been a religious guy, but look at this. All of his doctors, there’s no doctor that can explain what happened. They literally told us, ‘Call hospice in, this is it.’ The next day, he’s moving around, doing whatever he wants to do.”
One thing he wanted to do: Take Robinson to prom. The school made an exception and allowed him to attend as a sophomore.
More relief came in August when, after a sleepless night and a trip to the emergency room, a surgeon amputated the left arm. McDowell took his children to the waiting room as Bailey recovered from surgery, and it was standing room only — the place was packed with Bailey’s friends and family members. When Bailey woke up, he was so excited, he did one-armed pushups in celebration.
He was in school five days later. He was on the court a few days after that — despite being told to wait six to eight weeks. Things he took for granted before, like zipping a jacket and spreading butter on a piece of bread, took time to relearn. But he couldn’t wait to get moving, catching and shooting 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 lead. And we’re often wrong. Right now we’re following his cues.”
The people around Bailey took the news of Oct. 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 wept 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 her costume, which was made complete by tucking her left arm into her shirt.
Word got around school right after the diagnosis that Bailey only had two weeks left. Teammate and best friend Jett Epperson called him as soon as he got the word.
“I’m like, ‘How are you doing? But I mean, how are you really doing?’” Epperson recalled. “That’s the thing about Jayden, I’ve never seen him sad, I’ve never even seen him a little bit off. He’s the best dude I’ve ever met, but there’s no way this is easy.”
Bailey’s response for Epperson and others who asked: “Man, if I had two weeks left, 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 right now.”
The Brentwood game did not go well — the Bruins rolled behind 6-foot-10 big man Davis Cochran. Bailey started but couldn’t get many looks on the offensive end. He got to the line once and swished both free throws. But he did flash on one sequence, blocking a shot on defense, gathering the ball, bringing it up in transition and sizing up a defender.
Bailey put his bouncy hesitation move to use and shook free going right. He elevated and got off a shot with perfect rotation. It bounced off the rim, just short. But there it was — the element of surprise. It can catch those who aren’t familiar with Bailey’s game.
A couple of weeks earlier, a man was in his home, an oxygen tech from a respiratory equipment company. He had oxygen tanks to unload for the hospice care that has again been deemed inevitable. After getting everything unloaded, the man looked around and asked Elie: “Where’s the patient?”
She pointed toward the front door, at the sweating, smiling 16-year-old who had just walked in after driving home from basketball practice.