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‘God-given talent’: How Nico Mannion’s trainer helped set the stage for prodigy’s Arizona debut
By C.J. Holmes Oct 29, 2019
Nico Mannion, his parents and closest friends invoke a saying to remind them that nothing great can be accomplished alone: “It takes a village.”
Mannion’s inner circle, his village, is small. But it’s filled with people who have influenced his growth over the years. In one way or another, these individuals have helped him on his path to becoming an elite point guard prospect. This season, Mannion will be the face of Arizona basketball.
Some members of that village made the trip to Tucson to support Mannion in this year’s Red-Blue Game on Sept. 27, when the five-star freshman guard made his Wildcats debut. Mannion’s parents, Pace and Gaia, were there with his cousin Ludovica. Also in attendance was Mannion’s longtime trainer and friend, Vaughn Compton, who had worked closely with Mannion since he was 13 years old.
When player introductions began ahead of the scrimmage, Compton says he got a little emotional as Mannion jogged out of the McKale Center tunnel for the first time in his cardinal red Arizona uniform. Five years of meticulous training, and sacrifice, had led to this special moment. His “little brother” was finally on the big stage.
“I honestly started to get teary-eyed and I was like, ‘Wow. Here he is,’” Compton said. “What was once a vision is actually happening now. The visions are starting to become reality.”
Compton, 31, once had hoop dreams of his own. He was a 6-foot-2, 175-pound guard at Mountain View High in Mesa, where he won back-to-back state championships in 2005 and 2006, and was expecting to play college basketball at a Division II school after graduation. However, at an open gym following his senior year, he tore his ACL.
After surgery and a lengthy rehabilitation period, Compton continued to chase his dream of playing college basketball, but luck wasn’t on his side. Compton suffered two more ACL tears. Unable to return to full strength, he ended his playing career and enrolled at Arizona State, where he hoped to find direction.
With the emergence of social media, Compton constantly found himself on Instagram watching famous basketball trainers such as Micah Lancaster and Ganon Baker, and began to carefully study their craft. No longer able to play competitively, he fell in love with the concept of player development and started to train aspiring hoopers while coaching AAU basketball on the side.
In 2013, Compton, and former Wildcats guard Brendon Lavender founded the Ventura Basketball Academy in Scottsdale. Ever since, he’s worked with elite high school players in the Phoenix area, college players and professionals at every level. Today, he’s built a reputation as one of the better basketball trainers in the West.
Compton had been training and coaching at his academy for two years before he encountered Mannion. They first connected when Compton’s and Mannion’s AAU teams had a conjoined practice. Both teams spent a segment of the joint workout doing skill work under Compton’s instruction. And when the session concluded, Compton was approached by Pace Mannion, who asked if he’d be interested in training his son personally.
Pace Mannion was an NBA talent back in the day, while Gaia Mannion used to compete with the Italian national volleyball team. Compton says that Mannion didn’t look the part of a high-major player at 13 years old, but his fluidity and athleticism stood out. Mannion didn’t pass the eye test, but on the court, he was a natural.
“Nico was a skinny, short little redhead kid,” Compton said. “But when you see him start to move, he had a smooth quickness. He had some swagger to his game. It kind of pops out at you. I didn’t think kids like him were supposed to move like that. But he had that swagger to his game and he kind of moved differently. He was really smart with what he did, so you could tell he had God-given talent.”
Compton and Mannion began working out together two to five times a week, taking breaks only if Mannion was injured or needed a few weeks of rest following the season. Compton said he was impressed by Mannion’s work ethic, adding that it was hard to keep him out of the gym even when injured. In one specific instance, Mannion showed up to a workout with a broken hand incurred at Team USA camp.
“He had his cast on, so we just did conditioning drills, agility ladders and stationary ballhandling stuff,” Compton said.
In the beginning, most of Compton’s workouts with Mannion consisted of guard play basics: heavy ballhandling, changing speeds off the dribble, finishing creatively around the rim and using ball screens effectively. Then, as Mannion started playing at Pinnacle High, and with the West Coast Elite on the AAU circuit, Compton began to focus more on his weaknesses, and making sure he could consistently make the right reads in game-like scenarios.
When Mannion played in AAU tournaments, typically on weekends, his dad would communicate with Compton about weaknesses that showed up during those games. Compton and Mannion would get in the gym the following week and address them.
As a trainer, Compton is big on valuing each rep, with an extra emphasis on technique and muscle memory. And as a basketball player, the only way to develop good habits and improve your game is to practice with proper technique at game speed in game-like situations.
This is how Mannion trained for years. The results, of course, speak for themselves: consensus five-star recruit; two-time state champion; Gatorade 2019 Arizona Player of the Year; McDonald’s 2019 All-American.
“You combine Nico’s God-given talent with detailed instruction, working on changing speeds, changing direction, getting to specific places on the court with different moves and different setups, and over the years, that consistent work ethic just started to snowball,” Compton said. “It wasn’t until once he hit physical maturity, once he hit puberty, when he started getting the strength and the bounce and the explosiveness. The stars aligned. That’s when he really started to emerge on the AAU scene and people really started to take notice.
“A lot of players want to conquer everything in a short amount of time. They get impatient with the process. You have to have a plan in place to improve a little bit each day, each workout. That pattern over the course of months and years, that’s the recipe for success.”
Mannion added: “I really think Vaughn brings the best out of me just because he always has energy. And he’s working out with me. He’s not out there just rebounding and telling me what to do. All the stuff that I can do, he can do, too. He knows exactly how to do it, right down to all the little details.”
Compton and Mannion have developed a special bond that extends well beyond the hardwood. The Mannions view Compton as family. And in Compton’s eyes, Nico is more than a trainee.
“He’s like a little brother,” Compton said. “Of course we typically talk some basketball, but we talk about social life. We talk about movies. We talk about relationships. I mean, just everything. We’ve really built up this trust with each other where we can talk about any aspect of life and be comfortable with that.
“It’s pretty amazing how things worked out. But, in life, and in the basketball world, when you do things the right way — out of passion — good things tend to work themselves out, and good people come together.”
And according to Mannion, the feeling is mutual.
“Vaughn is more like a big brother to me than anything,” he said. “He’ll call me after games and we’ll talk about basketball, but the next day, we’ll get lunch and just talk about life. It’s just like, more of a brotherly thing. When I work out, I don’t even look at it like, ‘Oh, I have to go work out.’ It’s fun to me that I get to go see Vaughn and we get to work out together. He’s in there sweating with me, so I know it’s real.
“… He’s been through so much. He knows the answers to a lot of things. That’s obviously a big key, but the fact that he’s one of the best trainers on the West Coast is also a big key. I wouldn’t have met him if he wasn’t a trainer, if I didn’t play basketball. There’s so many things that just kind of lined us up. Our relationship is unbreakable. It’s more than basketball with us.”
This past summer, Compton spent hours in the gym with Mannion preparing him for his freshman season at Arizona. They focused heavily on shooting consistency off the catch, off the dribble, off ball screens and extending his range to adapt to the new college 3-point line. Compton is a film junkie, so they spent a lot of time watching video clips of the college game, too. In addition, Mannion also put in extra work in the weight room.
“I was trying to get in the weight room as much as I could because when I finished high school, I was about 170,” Mannion said. “I got up to around 185 this summer so that’s been good for me. Getting in the weight room was the biggest thing for me. And obviously the basketball stuff, staying in shape because you’re not playing any games. For those two months, I was pretty much in the gym every day with Vaughn and he did a great job. He kept me in shape, kept me crisp.”
Compton added: “Nico kind of had to start from scratch where he’s got to learn all of the defensive concepts and strategies, and everybody moves quicker at the college level. In high school, you could take a couple plays off and still be OK. But now in college, you take a couple of plays off and that’s an eight-point run for the opponent and the momentum completely changes. He’s just having to adjust and adapt to the college game, to the size and all that. But the thing I know about Nico is, he’s not just a talent. He adapts. He adjusts and it’s not a matter of if he will, it’s a matter of when.”
Compton recently drove down to Tucson from Phoenix to work out with Mannion. Per NCAA rules, he wasn’t allowed to train him on campus as a non-staff member, so he rented a court at the Sporting Chance Center off Curtis Road. Sean Miller is aware of Compton, and when he’s in town to work out with Mannion, he and his staff communicate details they’ve been focusing on with him in practice, so everyone’s on the same page.
“I had a 30-minute conversation with Coach Miller on what they’re working on with Nico,” Compton said. “The coaching staff is very cool about communicating that. And a coach could just be like, ‘Whatever, man. You’re his trainer. Just let us do our job.’ But that’s not the case. They’re being very cool about the open communication regarding Nico’s development and share their vision for him.”
And when Compton can’t make it down to Tucson for workouts, he knows that Mannion is in good hands. Miller has even allowed Compton to sit in on a few practices.
“It’s comforting,” he said. “I mean, Coach Miller runs a phenomenal practice. Coach Murphy, Coach Peters, Coach Gainey — they’re all just excellent at what they do. And then the grad assistant, Justin Coleman, who played at Arizona last year, he does a phenomenal job working with Nico. Nico loves his workouts. It’s comforting knowing that he has such great basketball minds and guys who are just focused on making him better.
“The coaching staff is super detail-oriented, so they’re holding him accountable for everything. They’re telling him the same things I’m telling him: be aggressive on ball screens, look to create, and that’s offensively. Defensively, just getting through screens, being in the right spots, communicating, all those things. They don’t let him get away with anything, man. And that’s the way I am in training, where I’m holding him accountable for all the details. They match that detail-oriented, kind of strive for perfection.”
As one of the top high school players in the country a year ago, Mannion enters his freshman season in Tucson with insanely high expectations.
“Nico is a spring-loaded Bobby Hurley,” college basketball analyst and former coach Fran Fraschilla said. “He has Hurley’s toughness and skills that Bobby displayed as a college All-American and may be a better athlete. … Nico is in the perfect spot at Arizona. There is a need for him to contribute immediately and he will get the benefit of playing for a hard-nosed coach in Sean Miller. It should be a great marriage.”
Some looked at Mannion’s nine-point performance on 2-of-7 shooting in the Red-Blue game and immediately feared the worst. Compton encourages Arizona fans to be patient. He also understands that doubters always come with the territory.
“Nico and his team had one official practice prior to that,” Compton said. “It was the first time for most of those guys playing at McKale in that environment, so it’s kind of expected. Just like any college freshman, it’s going to take him a little while to adapt. It’s way too early to start judging, but Nico is used to people being critical of everything he does. If you’re going to be a high-profile player, and play on the big stage, there’s going to be a lot of people pointing fingers and hating and pointing out any flaw they can come up with.”
Now, Compton will sit back and watch Mannion continue to grow up. He’s proud of the role he’s played in Mannion’s life, but will never boast about it.
After all, Mannion is the one who put in the work. Compton is just thankful to be a part of his journey, and as Mannion’s “big brother,” he knows he’s done his part.
“You can parent him, you can mentor him, but it’s Nico that makes the decisions,” Compton said. “It’s Nico that makes choices and listens to the right voices. I know he’s very humble, so he’s never going to say, ‘I did this.’ He’s going to give credit to everyone who helped him along the way. But at the end of the day, he’s the one who went out there and played. He’s the one who drove to the gym to work out. He’s the one to go and study game film. He’s done a great job. I couldn’t be more proud of him.”
