Arizona point guard Nico Mannion, one of the top college players in the country, has not made a decision on whether or not his first season as a Wildcat will be his last, despite reports to the contrary, per Sam Vecenie of The Athletic (Twitter link).
“He will make that decision after the season,” the 19-year-old’s father Pace Mannion told Vecenie on March 8. With the NCAA season officially canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that determination may be coming up sooner than the Mannion family was anticipating.
There’s more from around the basketball world:
- After resigning as Cavaliers head coach last month, John Beilein was hired as an analyst for the Big Ten Network studio team ahead of the anticipated start of the Big Ten Conference Tournament and March Madness, according to Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com. With the NCAA season canceled, Beilein may not have much to analyze for a while. Though Beilein is the winningest coach in Michigan basketball history, he struggled in the NBA, coaching the Cavaliers to a 14-40 record during 2019/20.
- Rick Pitino will return to college coaching at Iona College, per Forbes’ Adam Zagoria.“My passion in basketball started in New York and will end there at Iona College,” Pitino said. Pitino has been coaching Greek EuroLeague club Panathinaikos since 2018. He last coached in the NCAA for the University of Louisville from 2001-2017.
- WNBA executive director Terri Jackson spoke with Mark Medina of USA Today about the coronavirus and president Donald Trump’s travel ban precluding foreign nationals from traveling to the US from most European countries. Several WNBA players spend their offseasons overseas to supplement their earnings with more lucrative paydays from the international leagues. “Understanding [President Trump’s European] travel ban and understanding what came out of the White House is tough to grapple with,” Jackson told Medina.
Pitino should end his career as an assistant coach for the Knicks to help someone like Mark Jackson or Kenny Atkinson. Try to end his career making New York better in a much more meaningful way.
As for Mannion I think possibly waiting for next year could be a smart decision. This year as point guard entering the draft there doesn’t seem to be a huge bunch of teams needing a point and there’s lots competition.
Pistons and Knicks seem like the only teams in NEED of a point. Plus other top point guards possibly in the draft are Ball, Hampton, Anthony, Halliburton, Maledon, Maxey and Hayes.
Hopefully Brandon Williams can be fit and him and Nico can be fun exciting guards to watch for Arizona. Pick up someone like Greg Brown or Zaire Williams and let them run the team in scoring under help from Mannion as lead guard and distributer.
Makes no difference for Mannion as guards are always a dozen a dime in the league, always lots coming in & most teams don’t need a new one.
Now centers, always in short supply. This year everybody talks about the many guards but… there is only 1 center Wiseman.
When was the last MVP a centre, Shaq 1999-2000.
The game has changed and centres are becoming less and less important just look at the Rockets, Clippers, Celtics and stuff.
Since Shaq won it back then 4 point guards and 2 shooting guards have won MVP’s.
The league is a guard given league. Just because there is less quality centres doesn’t make them more valuable.
Since Shaq’s 99/00 MVP year, the number 1 overall pick in the draft has been a centre 10 times and 5 times it has been a guard. Yet in today’s NBA aside from Embid and Jokic there are probably 20 better guards than the third best centre.
I’m not a Trump supporter, but Jackson can’t understand the need for a travel ban from European countries? That seems like common sense.
We’re in this period politically where it is absolutely forbidden to do anything but hysterically shriek in objection to literally anything Trump does. They’re freaking out over the Covid response; we’re not exactly overrun with Covid cases, so I’m not sure what more could have been done.