Official Site of the Warriors · Jan 29, 2021
Nico and Pace Mannion: A Bond Through Basketball
Draft night for rookie Warrior Nico Mannion did not go quite as expected. The 19-year-old guard who had high school and college accolades was coming off a solid freshman year at the University of Arizona, but he was picked 48th overall by the Warriors.
“Falling to 48, I was honestly mad about it at first.”
His father, Pace Mannion, had been though the rigors of a draft day and the NBA grind himself and could comfort Nico when he was down.
But coming from a different era when the NBA Draft had 226 picks over 10 rounds, Pace’s draft day experience was certainly different from Nico’s, too.