G League Alum Terance Mann Cements Place In Clippers Nation Folklore
The board man (Kawhi Leonard) might be the one who gets paid, but G League alum Terance Mann cashed in during his absence.
Terance Mann was the man on Friday night. That’s it. That’s the lead (much less the tweet, as the kids say these days).
At 24 years old, the young gun Mann emerged to score a roaring 39 points to help the Clippers beat the Jazz and advance to the Western Conference Finals for the first time in franchise history, ending a drought 50 years in the making.
It was an all-time night for snazzy catchphrases, with Mike Breen exclaiming “Oh, what a Man(n)!” and Mark Jackson gleefully leaning into his classic “Mamma, there goes that Man(n)!” as the second year guard put on a show Clippers fans won’t soon forget. It was a historic night in front of the first full-capacity indoor crowd in Los Angeles since the pandemic began.
It was fitting that Mann turned into a magician and caused the jaw of every fan in attendance to drop again and again with each awing bucket. They were anxious for a win, and the 48th overall pick of the 2019 NBA Draft’s heroics kept them on the edge of their seats.
Now that he’s cemented his place in the folklore of Clippers Nation, it’s worth asking: just where did this…Mann…come from?
On a team led by Kawhi Leonard and Paul George (who have a combined twelve NBA All-Star appearances between them), one wouldn’t have expected Mann to lead the way in such fashion. But with Leonard sidelined due to injury, Mann answered the call for reinforcements and then some.
Mann has a tendency for answering important calls. After participating in the 2019 NBA G League Elite Camp (the Elite Camp fittingly returns this weekend after a pandemic-forced absence last year), Mann received a call with a subsequent invite to the NBA Draft Combine that year. His performances sparked enough interest from the Clippers to take a chance on him, but it certainly hasn’t been all rainbows and roses from thereon out.
Mann appeared in just 41 games during his rookie campaign, supplementally suiting up for the G League affiliated Agua Caliente Clippers for 20 games. He averaged a promising 15.4 points 8.8 rebounds, and 5.7 assists, but even that didn’t result in much increased stability at the next level. The Clippers went through a coaching change as Mann entered year two (though current head coach Tyronn Lue was an assistant on Doc Rivers’ staff during Mann’s rookie campaign). The youngster has had to grind it out for playing time, even falling out of the rotation quite a bit this season. He received single-digit minutes in fourteen games during the regular season and saw a dismal one minute of action as recently as game two of his team’s conference semifinals series with Utah.
Los Angeles lost the first two games of the series, with Mann playing nine total minutes. They went on to win the next four (and the series), with their new up and comer averaging 15.5 points in 24.8 minutes per contest.
It could just be a coincidence. But what the Clippers gain when Mann is on the floor is a fearless competitor, someone who is hungry on defense and eager to assert himself on offense. All he needed was a little encouragement, but when his team called upon him to shoot the ball more, he answered yet again. Mann knocked down 7 shots from long range, shooting 15 of 21 from the field overall. He used his athleticism to get buckets down low, even when he had his fight his way inside. Somehow, some way, he found himself open from beyond the arc a lot more than he should have been.
Mann cashed in, and it was the Jazz who paid the price.
But for what it’s worth, Mann’s ascension is some amazing free press for the NBA G League and its Elite Camp. In just two seasons, look how far Mann (and others — fellow Elite Camp and G League alum Oshae Brissett had his own special moment earlier in the playoffs) has come.
The prospects suiting up this weekend hope they can have success as they embark on such a path, and someone like Mann is solid proof that it can happen very quickly.