He just wants to win: Future Wildcat Nico Mannion doesn't let anything get in his way

In the past three months alone, Nico Mannion has played for the Italian national team, a high-level travel ball club and worked out with a personal basketball trainer regularly.

So the idea of a preseason workout at Phoenix Pinnacle High School might seem a little unappealing, or of limited value. Maybe even boring.

That wasn’t the vibe Pinnacle coach Charlie Wilde received from Mannion early last week, at least after he mentioned one detail about the school’s upcoming workout.

“We had a college coming in to watch and he was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m gonna play,’” Wilde said. “But I said ‘this college is looking at (a teammate).’ And he said, ‘Ooh. OK, put him on my team and I’ll make him look better.’”

Wilde says this is the kind of thing he sees all the time in his star point guard, who led Pinnacle to the Class 6A title last spring, joined the Italian team for World Cup qualifying play, and committed on Sept. 14 to Arizona.

Starting in 2019-20, the Wildcats stand to benefit from his talent and selflessness, too.

“Last year he was averaging 27.8 points because one of our best players was hurt,” Wilde said. “Once he came back, Nico went to 23 a game and never said a word. He just doesn’t care. He wants to win. He’ll do whatever I ask.”

Wilde said even the timing of Mannion’s decision said something about him. Mannion said last July that he wanted to make his decision by January or February so as to get it done before the high school playoffs. Even as North Carolina and Kentucky tried to move in during July, Mannion quickly trimmed his list to four schools and then, by early September, to just two, UA and Marquette.

A week after that, Mannion decided he didn’t need to see Marquette after all. He made the decision before the high school season even started.

His focus now is on workouts to prepare for his senior season of high school and his college career.

“He’s unbelievable,” Wilde said. “Everything’s about the team. He wanted to make sure he committed before the season because he wanted to concentrate on the season, because it means something to him.”

Wilde said Mannion’s parents keep him grounded, but they also have their own high-level athletic experience to pass down. Mannion’s mother, Gaia, played professional volleyball in her native Italy, while his father, Pace, was a standout basketball player for Utah who played in the NBA and for 13 seasons in Italy.

From his mother, Nico picked up the Italian language and some pointed reminders to stay real. In a longform 2017 article about Mannion’s life as a teenage basketball prodigy, Sports Illustrated wrote that “it is a running joke in the Mannion family that Nico’s impressive hops and competitive drive originate not from his NBA father but from his spiking, stomping mother, who, if Nico starts to complain, will say, in her Italian-accented English, ‘Oh, no, call the Whaaa-mbulance!’”

From his father, among other things, Nico picked up what it really means to be a point guard.

“Growing up, my dad just told me to make the right play,” Nico said. “It’s not about how many points or assists you make. I’m not about the stats. I’m just interested in helping the team. That’s my mindset.”

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There was also another reason Pace Mannion, a forward at Utah, put Nico on the ball throughout his youth: He was too little to play anything else.

Nico Mannion was born six weeks early on March 14, 2001, and his doctors weren’t overly optimistic that he’d grow up at all, really.

“It was 50-50 after he was born,” Pace said. “He had a blood transfusion, and was on antibiotics and they didn’t know if he was going to make it. The doc said ‘If he’s a fighter, he’s gonna make it. If he’s not, he’s not going to make it.’ Obviously, he was a fighter.”

Doctors told the family that Nico wouldn’t have a growth spurt but would instead consistently grow, possibly to age 20, because his body would always be trying to catch up.

Nico grew into a healthy child, but he was still catching up even into middle school. At age 14, he was just 5-6 and about 130 pounds, so Pace and Gaia decided to hold him back from high school.

They essentially reversed that decision over the summer after Nico finished his sophomore season by scoring 21 points in Pinnacle’s 6A championship win over Phoenix Mountain Pointe, then held his own while playing with grown men in Europe.

A dual U.S.-Italian citizen, Nico played for the Italian national team in a FIBA World Cup qualifying game on July 1, collecting nine points and two rebounds while playing a team-high 29 minutes in Italy’s 81-66 loss to the Netherlands.

It was a sometimes rough, but valuable, experience.

“Going over I thought it was going to be a lot different,” Nico Mannion said. “I didn’t have a lot of fun because I was with a lot of grown men, and I was with them for lunch and dinner every day. But it was really good for me.”

Three weeks after he returned from Europe, Nico announced would go ahead and skip his junior year of high school, effectively rejoining the high school class of 2019. He’ll still be 18 by the time he graduates next spring.

Now, as a 6-foot-3, 175-pound high school senior, Nico might yet grow another inch or two, and he says also wants to put on another 10 pounds of strength even before he arrives at Arizona. He works out not only at Pinnacle but also with Scottsdale-based basketball trainer Vaughn Compton, a partner with former UA wing Brendon Lavender.

“I just want to be prepared,” Nico says.

So, by now, it’s clear that no matter how big physically Nico Mannion gets, he’s still every bit that undersized point guard trying to glue teams together and win games.

“He’s always been small, so he’s always been a point,” Pace said. “My thought process to him was ‘it’s an easy game. If you’re open, shoot it. If you’re not, pass it.’

“In the flow of games, he’s about keeping others involved and I think that’s why guys like to play with him. He tries to be the consummate point guard.”