Terance Mann's mother, Daynia, saw her son's breakthrough coming all along

By Melissa Rohlin
FOX Sports NBA Writer

Terance Mann's mother is still in disbelief. 

For Daynia La-Force, the sun felt warmer and the birds chirped louder since her son, a swingman on the LA Clippers, had the best game of his life, as Mann scored a dazzling 39 points in Game 6 of the second round of the playoffs against the Utah Jazz on Friday.

Mann "single-handedly willed" the Clippers to their first appearance in the Western Conference finals in their 50-year history, in which they trail the Phoenix Suns 1-0, with Game 2 set for Tuesday. 

La-Force, an assistant coach for the WNBA's Atlanta Dream, was watching the game from a hotel room in Mississippi with her husband, Eddie Benton, an assistant women's basketball coach at Mississippi State.

The feed on their television was a bit delayed. Before they saw Mann make two 3-pointers in the first 2:30 of the game, they heard about it. 

"The phone was pinging every 30 seconds," La-Force said. "I knew something was going on."

La-Force hardly looked up after that. For the next two hours, she received a barrage of text messages alerting her of what was happening before it materialized on her screen. 

There were multiple dunks. There were seven made 3s. With each miraculous thing Mann did, his mother received many messages describing it. 

"It was friends, it was family, it was people I hadn't spoken to in years," she said. 

Mann, who started for injured superstar Kawhi Leonard, went on to dig his team out of a 25-point deficit with a stunning 20-point third quarter on 8-for-11 shooting, including making four 3-pointers. 

La-Force and Benton were screaming so loudly that another coach came to their door and told them they were being too loud. 

Before Friday, the 24-year-old Mann was well respected within the Clippers organization. But outside of it, most people had never heard his name. 

That changed after he led the Clippers to their biggest win in half a century. 

"I was brought to tears after the game," La-Force said. "What touched me the most was when 19,000 people stood up and gave him a standing ovation at the end of that game. As a mom, that's just so amazing, especially when you know how hard this kid has worked his entire life."

Mann, who is in his second season in the NBA, had never scored 30 points in a game before Friday. In his entire pro career, he had only four 20-point performances. What he did in Game 6, on the biggest of stages, was entirely unexpected.

It was improbable. It was stunning. It was beautiful. 

When Mann entered the locker room after leading the Clippers to a 131-119 win, his teammates screamed and dumped water over his head as they jumped around him. 

Mann then FaceTimed his mother, as he does after every game. 

"He had a big smile on his face," La-Force said. "He said, 'That was fun.' And I said, 'It looked fun.'"

Mann grew up around basketball. His mother gave birth to him at age 23 after a four-season career at Georgetown. She then spent nearly 25 years as a Division I basketball coach. 

Her passion became his. 

"From the moment he was born, he never put that basketball down," La-Force said. "We would buy him cars and all types of toys, and the only thing he ever wanted to play with was a basketball. He always wanted to come to all my practices. He wanted to travel with my team."

Mann learned how to count by memorizing jersey numbers when his mother was an assistant coach at Long Island University.

As a toddler, he volunteered to be the ball boy, though he didn't quite understand the gig. 

"He thought the ball boy meant that he had to protect the basketballs from everyone," La-Force recalled. "Because he wasn't giving them up when the girls would ask for them."

They lived on the fourth floor of a two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, and for hours, every day, Mann and his younger brother, Martin, who plays for Pace University, would play one-on-one on a miniature hoop in the hallway.

Mann would pretend he was the coach, the referee and a player. He'd narrate the game out loud until it drove everyone up the wall. 

"My neighbors at that time would take a broom and hit the top of the ceiling to get them to stop making noise," La-Force said. 

As La-Force advanced in her career, eventually becoming the head coach at New Haven, Northeastern and Rhode Island, she often worked long hours. She'd come home late at night and then watch film. 

Mann would always be by her side. 

La-Force assumed her son just wanted to spend quality time together. But she later learned that Mann was studying the game, too. 

"He was watching everything," she said. 

Mann grew into an incredibly smart and tough player. At Tilton High School in New Hampshire, he averaged 23.1 points and 7.8 rebounds as a senior. He went on to play for Florida State for four seasons, leading the Seminoles to the Sweet 16 in the 2019 NCAA Tournament. 

After Mann was selected by the Clippers as the 48th overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft, La-Force had a talk with team president Lawrence Frank.

She believed her son could do it all. He could score. He could play lockdown defense. He could be a facilitator. And he could rebound. Mann could turn into a Swiss army knife of sorts, averaging triple-doubles.

But in order to get the best out of him, one thing was key. 

"I said Terance values coaching," La-Force said. "Terance needs to have a great player-coach relationship with the head coach. If he does, he will run through a brick wall for that coach."

La-Force said that was what happened Friday. 

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Throughout the season, Clippers coach Tyronn Lue has shown Mann that he believes in him. 

There was the time Mann, along with the team's other reserves, helped the Clippers claw their way out of a 22-point deficit to beat the Atlanta Hawks in March. Or the time Mann had 20 points on 7-for-7 shooting in May against the Toronto Raptors. 

"I think Ty Lue has done a phenomenal job of putting Terance in situations where he had to step up prior to the playoffs," La-Force said. "There were several games, whether it was due to injuries or just the veterans not playing well, that Terance was inserted to be an impact player and made a difference, and he answered the call every single time."

From day one, Lue was impressed by Mann's approach. 

He's willing to do whatever is asked of him and morph into any position the team needs to be filled. Lue wanted him to improve his shooting, and Mann responded by making 41.8% from beyond the arc this season, helping open the court for everyone around him. 

"He has a lot of confidence, and just his work ethic got him to this point," Lue said. 

Mann was groomed all season for what happened Friday. 

With the whole world watching, he delivered in the most spectacular fashion possible. 

"I trust my work," Mann said. "When you trust in your work, you trust in yourself, you're not surprised when any of this happens."

For La-Force, it was breathtaking. 

It's something she knew was coming. In fact, before the game, she and her husband joked around, questioning whether Mann's breakthrough game could happen on such a big night. 

When Mann started exploding from everywhere on the court, they were flabbergasted. 

"We were like, ‘Wow, is this really happening?’" she said. "'Is this kid really going off like this?'"

After the night was over and she had a moment to process what had just happened, she was overwhelmed with gratitude. What she had believed in her heart was bound to happen had finally come to fruition. 

 "It was just so exciting for the world to finally see it," she said. 

The secret was finally out. 

A mother's dream had come true. 

Melissa Rohlin is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. She has previously covered the league for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, the Bay Area News Group and the San Antonio Express-News. Follow her on Twitter @melissarohlin.