Jerryd Bayless Rumors

After Timberwolves practice Thursday, guard Jerryd Bayless was set to get a massage and go home, but his work wasn’t done for the day. “I have a paper due on [Saturday],” Bayless said. “I’ll get a massage and I’ll go knock that out. It’s a short paper, only five pages.” That paper represents one of the final steps Bayless is taking toward a goal that began when he enrolled at the University of Arizona in 2007 — getting his degree in African-American studies.

You might not know he is doing this while taking 12 credits to complete work on a degree he began nearly 12 years ago at Arizona before leaving to pursue the NBA after his freshman year. It provides a glimpse into the type of person Bayless is — someone who is a voracious reader, who is in touch with the world outside of the whirring basketball bubble the NBA can be, and someone who has an appetite for history and seeing how that affects society now. “This was always the goal,” Bayless said. “I left after my freshman year, but … I knew I had to do it. It was just a matter of when I was going to do it.”

“Education was always the singular focus of my house, and I was the black sheep of the family in terms of athletics,” Bayless said. “No one really played sports. My mom and dad, they encouraged me and loved me for doing it. But that was never the push in my house.”

Dane Moore: I’ve been fascinated by Jerryd Bayless — the person — since he’s been around the Wolves. I’ve see him, frequently, reading at his locker. And his disposition… I dunno, he just seems like a thinker. ⁦@Christopher Hine⁩ pulls back the curtain here: startribune.com/wolves-guard-j…