‘Complete Player’ Terance Mann should be in a starting position next season

Terance Mann remembers what it was like to meet Kevin Durant at the 2014 Kevin Durant Nike Skills Academy, when Mann was entering his senior year at Tilton School in New Hampshire. That was the same year future NBA stars such as Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown attended.

This past weekend, Mann hosted 128 campers ages 5 to 19 at his aptly named Terance Mann Complete Player Foundation Camp.

“I went to Kevin Durant camp, I went to LeBron’s camp, and we still have the pictures to this day,” Mann said Sunday. “These are guys I play against all the time. I remember standing next to (Durant) like, ‘Yo, this is crazy; you have your own camp? I’m walking up to you. I’m taking pictures with you.’ We’re getting bags that say Kevin Durant Skills Academy on it. And I was, like, ‘One day, I want to do this.’”

If Mann was going to have a camp for young basketball players who look up to him, it had to reflect all of the values he upholds. The Lowell, Mass., native spent four years at Florida State, then was drafted by the LA Clippers with the 48th pick of the 2019 NBA Draft, and he has emerged as a fixture in the organization.

The entire time, Mann has had his circle close to him, including his mother, Daynia La-Force, his brother, Martin Mann, and his friend and manager, Romello Crowell. Now, they all have a role in Mann’s new foundation, where his goal is to increase opportunities for youth through basketball, as well as in school.

“At a young age — at you guys’ age — I had a vision of going to the NBA, and I told myself that I’d do whatever it takes,” Mann told campers at Apollo Park in Downey, Calif., about 14 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. “That took everybody helping me out, and that’s just really why I want to give back.

“Somebody just asked me: ‘What do you take pride in? What do you love doing other than basketball?’ I didn’t really have an answer other than making other people happy, making other people enjoy their life, bringing other people along with me. I didn’t want to experience this lifestyle by myself. I always have my best friend with me, my brother, whoever it is I want to bring with me.”

You would be hard-pressed to find a name for a camp that fits a player more appropriately than “Complete Player” fits Mann. He said he came up with “something that resonated with the way people think of me and kind of related to my game.” After four seasons with the Clippers, Mann certainly has demonstrated what he is capable of across every position. And, while positionless is a term that can be a scam when putting teams together, it is a credit to Mann in that he demonstrates a skill set in a body type (6-5, 215) that does not leave him in a box.

“I’m a positionless player,” Mann said. “I feel like I do everything pretty well. That just molds the complete player of whatever it is: passing, shooting, dribbling, rebounding. Whatever it is.”

Mann primarily was a…