Chris Mañon has loud impact in first NBA Summer League game

For as different as the scenery was on the blue and yellow floor at the Chase Center in Chris Mañon’s NBA Summer League Debut, it didn’t appear to be all that different for the former Vanderbilt wing. 

The 3-point line was further away and the jersey number was 36 instead of 30. Perhaps the nerves were higher. The same Mañon trotted out there and did the same things he always has as he made his first attempt to make an impression on NBA teams as an undrafted free agent. 

If his eight-point performance–in which he grabbed three rebounds, recorded three steals, two blocks and had a plus-minus of +12 in a 89-84–was any indication, Mañon’s stock is up. 

Perhaps on the offensive end, Mañon could’ve been missed as he waited for the Warriors’ guards to get him a touch in the corner and out of the short roll. Once Duke center Marques Bolden fired up an open 3 and two guys ended up on the ground in the moments following the whistle being blown, it wasn’t hard to guess that Mañon was one of them. 

If you couldn’t tell by his springy figure finding his way towards the ball like it often did at Vanderbilt, you could as the announcers mispronounced his last name and lauded his academic background and degrees from Cornell as well as Vanderbilt. 

Mañon doesn’t have the pedigree of his teammates like former Houston guard LJ Cryer and Florida guard Will Richard–both of which are former national champions–or former Kansas State forward Coleman Hawkins–who received one of college basketball’s biggest paydays in 2024-25–but he was in the starting lineup while Cryer and Hawkins started the game on the bench. 

Perhaps Mañon’s 6.6 points per game and six double-figure scoring games in his lone power-five season would appear to disqualify him from a role like that, but those numbers don’t tell the story of what he did in his season at Vanderbilt or what he ultimately showed on Saturday. 

The box score doesn’t catch Mañon bodying up former Tennessee star Dalton Knecht and chasing him off the three-point line in an outing that saw the former Volunteer go for just _ points. It doesn’t factor in the former Vanderbilt wing being around the ball seemingly every time it came off the glass. 

It doesn’t factor in Chris Mañon being Chris Mañon. 

“Mañon has a reputation for being tough,” Warriors play-by-play announcer Tim Roy said on the broadcast as Mañon battled for a rebound. 

In all the ways Mañon was tough in his four-year college career, he was tough again on Saturday as he appeared to embrace the glue guy, disruptor role and stood out primarily as a result of his energy. 

At the lowest levels of basketball, the ball often finds energy. Turns out that at this high level it does, too. 

Mañon was seemingly rewarded for his cutting and defensive intensity as he trailed on a third-quarter fastbreak, cocked it back and threw down a dunk over a defender to give the Warriors a lead. It was the ultimate moment in the sun for a player that thrives on a style that doesn’t generate many. 

Perhaps the former Vanderbilt wing didn’t have a loud impression on Saturday’s box score, but his impact was as loud as anyone on the floor for the Warriors. It was also as practical as anyone’s. It was more predicated on things that he doesn’t need a significant role or the ball in his hands in order to do. 

On a night that started with talk of anyone but Mañon, it was the former Vanderbilt wing that stole the show for trained basketball minds that have come to understand the impact he makes each night.