Terance Mann will start season as the Clippers' fifth starter

Clippers wing Terance Mann, left, drives against Nuggets guard Jamal Murray.

Staff Writer

Oct. 20, 2023 12:50 PM PT

For Terance Mann, becoming the most-wanted man in two NBA cities has meant checking social media, but learning to avoid the comments.

It means being named a Clippers starter on Friday while still hearing chatter that he might not finish the season on the same team.

Last June it meant celebrating a moment of hard-earned stability, the result of going from a second-round draft pick to a second contract, only to have it be just that — a fleeting moment.

“First day I put my down payment on my house, I got a call saying, ‘Did you see what’s on Twitter?’” Mann told The Times. “I’m like, ‘What?’ Crazy. It is what it is.”

What was on Twitter that day was the trade speculation that has surrounded the Clippers, and Mann in particular, in the four months since. Philadelphia’s James Harden, the guard known for his Hall-of-Fame credentials, beard, step-back jumper and exits-gone-awry with Houston and Brooklyn, had just gone against expectations and exercised his player option for the final year of his contract, but with the desire to be traded. The Clippers remain his preferred destination.

As a multi-dimensional wing with proven postseason credentials who was about to enter the first year of a team-friendly contract extension, Mann was a natural inclusion in trade speculation. But four months later, it has not gone away.

Parsing the Clippers’ and 76ers’ negotiations is an inexact exercise, changing slightly depending on which league insider is sharing information, with Mann and Harden just two factors among a more complex discussion, not the either-or variable it has often been portrayed. Yet one clear constant is how highly thought of Mann has become. The 76ers want the 6-foot-5 wing included in any deal. The Clippers, who value him for the same reasons as the rest of the league — his malleability, durability, reliability and suitability alongside a range of teammates — do not.

Mann left the Clippers’ preseason finale Thursday evening inside Crypto.com Arena wearing a bemused smile. Being Mann, in this moment, means accepting as true what his coach, Tyronn Lue, noted, that “it’s a good thing to be wanted.” Yet talked about as a trade asset in discussions around the league, Mann is also a 27-year-old trying to figure out the best way to go about his job.

“In the beginning it was tough, but I learned from my vets, they’ve all been through it,” Mann said. “… I don’t even click on comments. I don’t even bear to do that because I heard it’s not good for the brain. You’re human. You read something, it sits in your mind. You come to work and it’s on your mind. I don’t even bother.”

By now, Mann said, he is more or less used to the speculation. He said he doesn’t ask Lawrence Frank, the team’s top basketball executive, for insight into his status.

“I don’t even worry about it,” he said.

Norman Powell, one Clippers veteran who has developed calluses from hearing his name in trade talks throughout his career, said accepting a player’s lack of control over their career path is one of few ways to cope with speculation. So, too, he said, is still working on the court as though it doesn’t exist.

“Every single day when you come in and you’re not traded or whatever it is, you got a job to do so it doesn’t matter if your name’s being mentioned in it,” Powell said. “Until that call happens or that move is made, you’ve got to come in there with the mindset that you’re going to help the team win that you’re on.”

Mann acknowledged that the attention, which has increased because leaks have proliferated as the regular season approaches next week, has been a little jarring, considering it has only been four years since he remembers commanding far less attention around the league.

In the spring of 2019, he received a call from the NBA — one he nearly missed because his phone had 1% of battery power left — that he’d earned one of the last invitations to its scouting combine. A few weeks later, Mann lasted until the 48th overall draft pick before the Clippers selected him. He spent his rookie season almost wholly outside the spotlight, playing mostly in the G League.

At the same time, Mann is not altogether surprised by how highly teams now think of him. He envisioned a trajectory from second-round pick to rotational mainstay. On Friday, Lue announced Mann had earned his biggest role yet as the team’s fifth starter — alongside Russell Westbrook, Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and Ivica Zubac — because of his versatility.

Hearing how much teams value him “is flattering, but it’s what I worked for,” Mann said. “I’m in the gym every day to make myself better, to make myself a piece in this league that people want and that’s what I strive to just be. I’m not surprised by it.”

Clippers guard Terance Mann, left, is fouled by Suns forward Kevin Durant as he leaps into the air to make a pass.

Neither is anyone who has watched his progression since the winter of 2021, midway through his second season, when Mann began to show why a college coach at Florida State nicknamed him “High-Speed WiFi” for his instant connection with teammates, making their lives easier. With the Clippers, as in Tallahassee, Mann did the small things in a big way, crashing the glass and guarded while guarding point guards to power forwards and scoring around the margins offensively. Then he entered Clippers’ playoff lore by securing the team’s first Western Conference finals appearance with 39 points in a close-out victory against Utah.

The breakout earned him the two-year, $22-million contract extension that helped him buy his Southern California house this summer. In his two seasons since, he has averaged 25 minutes a game.

“Terance Mann,” said former Clippers coach Doc Rivers, “has grown into a terrific, just solid, role player.”

To the Clippers, Mann’s value doesn’t lie solely in what he brings them now. The roster’s championship ambitions are built around a core of experienced stars in their early 30s. To win in the future, with few draft assets to acquire top-end talent, they need to also develop young talent wherever they can find it. Mann, whose contract runs through 2025, could be a bridge to that future while still making them better in the present.

The Clippers view Mann as an essential piece to winning basketball, and if their goal is to win a championship, then adding Harden while not giving up Mann could put them closer to challenging the best in the Western Conference.

“If you’re going to call his number, he’s going to come in and play hard anyway and sometime have some games like Game 6 [2021 playoffs vs. Utah], he’s going to save your life from nowhere,” forward Nicolas Batum said. “So it is a joy to have a guy like this. You need a guy like that in order to win. A guy like T. Mann, he’s going to do whatever, and he’s still young, 27, he’s pretty young.

“If you want to be a successful team, you need guys like him on your team.”

And the Clippers value him being part of theirs.

“We love T. Mann, and T. Mann is going to be here,” Lue said. “So we’re not really worried about what they’re saying outside, all the speculation.”