Sam Vecenie: Just reached out to Pace Mannion, Nico Mannion’s father. He says the reports of Nico Mannion declaring for the draft are false. No decision has been made. “He will make that decision after the season,” Mannion said.
Nico Mannion Rumors
25 Jan
A couple of days later Dan Majerle—former Suns star, current college coach, no Googling required—came up during a camp game and said, “Nico, Grand Canyon University is offering you a scholarship. Now go back to the game.” San Francisco came next, sight unseen, followed by Utah State and Utah, Pace’s alma mater. This meant Nico had six scholarship offers before he’d played a game in high school, which Pace deems “crazy” but is not all that uncommon. High-profile middle schoolers have been targeted for years, going back to 2003, when Taylor King accepted an offer to UCLA before his first high school game. More recently, LeBron James Jr., who is 10, reportedly received college offers, which understandably pissed off his dad. And there exist websites already covering “The Class of 2027”, also known as second graders. The fact that all this happens does not make it right, much less beneficial in any way to the still-developing boys, only legally allowable.
Four years from now, if all goes as planned, Nico Mannion will be on your TV, playing for a big-time college basketball program, like UCLA or Duke or Kentucky. He’ll lead the offense fearlessly, rain deep jumpers and regularly dunk on fools. He’ll also own a bazillion free pairs of shoes, eat Oreos whenever he wants and have, like, a hundred thousand followers on Instagram. He might even have a girlfriend, though he’s not totally sure about that part yet. And after that? Well, after that the future gets awfully big. The NBA? The face of a shoe company? His own bobblehead, complete with a poof of red hair?
After all, when Nico was in middle school, his youth coach watched him skittering around the court and zipping passes, and declared that if you want to see what an NBA lottery pick looks like, well, there you go, and he’d point at the tiny, goofy-looking pale kid, all elbows and ears, who couldn’t weigh more than a wet golden retriever. And of course this was a ridiculous and unfair amount of pressure to put on a 13-year-old, because as any parent knows, extrapolation is an inexact science when it comes to human beings. Many a towering seventh-grader becomes an average-sized adult, and just because little Judy is good at math now doesn’t mean she won’t end up working the night shift at IHOP.
Still, Nico grew some and kept getting better until, one afternoon in eighth grade, his dad handed him a cellphone on the way back from practice, and the voice on the other end was Cal State–Northridge coach Reggie Theus, who said he just knew that Nico was going to be his kind of player, and that he wanted to make him a scholarship offer right there, on the phone, without even seeing him in person, because that way Nico would always remember that it was Theus, a former NBA star, who offered first, way before all the big schools. And upon hearing this, Nico freaked out a bit but tried to look supercool, because one of his teammates was in the car and, besides, that’s what you do when you’re a real baller.
Nico has seen only a few clips of Pace, but knows he was a 6’ 7″ small forward with a sweet mustache who played at Utah, spent six seasons coming off the bench in the NBA, then 13 starring in the Italian league. Similarly, Nico has never seen footage of his mom playing pro volleyball in Italy but knows she must have been legit because, well, just look at her, all quads and biceps even now, at 42.
