Former NBA basketball player and popular singer Thurl Bailey shared part of his journey through life with the youth filling the Salt Lake Tabernacle during a fireside Tuesday evening, Aug. 10.

Photo by Greg Hill

Popular singer and former NBA player Thurl Bailey talks to youth about his life in basketball and the Church.

This was another in an ongoing series of youth devotionals presented by the Church in the Tabernacle.

Beginning with his struggle to make his junior high basketball team and ending with a fervent testimony, Brother Bailey enthralled the congregation through nearly an hour of speech and song. After Sister Susan W. Tanner, Young Women general president, welcomed the approximately 5,000 young men and young women to the fireside, Brother Bailey was introduced through a video that included comments from family members as well as his former Utah Jazz teammates John Stockton and Karl Malone, and Jazz owner Larry Miller. Through his early school years, young Thurl developed many talents such as music, drama and leadership. And when he decided to pursue basketball at age 14, he was already 6-foot-5, so the sport seemed like an easy path to follow. Nevertheless, his earliest experience was getting cut from the seventh-grade team. Then from the eighth-grade team. The following year, a new coach gave him a new perspective. After he made the team, the coach told him he wasn't a very good player but that he had potential.

He turned that potential into success on the court in high school and an All-American career at North Carolina State University, where he was part of the 1983 NCAA championship team. Later that year he was a first-round NBA draft choice of the Utah Jazz.

That left the kid who grew up in Washington, D.C. with a big question, he said: "Where's Utah?"

He soon found out and liked it. He said he met a lot of nice people and received many gifts — about 65 copies of the Book of Mormon that filled his library. "I learned a lot about the Church. A lot."

Before long, his basketball journey took a new course. He was traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves and, later went to play in Europe. It wasn't a great experience — new environment, new culture, little basketball success — and his wife, Sindi, didn't like it at all, he said. Nevertheless, when he was later offered a place on a very young team in Italy which consistently finished in 18th place in an 18-team league, he didn't feel good about turning it down.

He said he told his wife, "Honey, we need to go to Italy," though he admitted he didn't know why.

When he got to Italy, he called the missionaries because he knew they would be familiar to him and they would likely speak English. Over the next while, the missionaries visited and discussed the gospel with him.

"It was an amazing time for me," he said. He realized that there maybe was a reason he had to go to Italy, to humble himself and to see through some things that were clouding his mind.

"On Dec. 31, 1995, I stood in the middle of a baptismal font in Milan, Italy," he said. Then he knew "wholeheartedly why my journey had taken me to a foreign country."

He assured the youth that they all have potential and that Heavenly Father wants them to succeed. He told them to heed the Lord's counsel: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you" (Matthew 7:7).

Brother Bailey continued, "When we do what Heavenly Father asks of us, we will certainly be rewarded. . . . I'm grateful to have the gospel in my life and the priesthood in my home."

After counseling the youth to watch that they don't sacrifice their morals and values, he repeated President Gordon B. Hinckley's often stated advice to "do the best you can."

Concluding, Brother Bailey told his listeners, "I hope your journey leads you back to Him."

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