Meet JJ Mandaquit, a UW player already with NBA connections

The University of Washington's basketball team needed a point guard that can get involved in everyone's business. So far, JJ Mandaquit fits this profile.

He is the first newcomer on the campus for Danny Sprinker's second Husky team, which is already connected with veterans Zoom Diallo and Franck Kepnang, the only holdovers, while another 10 or more new players come to join them.

He regularly exceeded Sprinker's coaching staff, which he considered the best playmaker of the high school in this last class after it had no designated point last season.

And the 6-foot 4 mandaquit has already established a connection with the NBA and even interacted with one of the greatest legends in the game.

When he was a US basketball player in the USA, representatives of the league liked the way Mandaquit presented himself, and asked him to be part of his junior -nba/junior -Wnba program for WNBA Court of Leaders.

This in turn meant that he had selected a player in the league to obtain a Champion Prize for Social Justice named for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

His goal is to get to the NBA, but the NBA came to him first.

Mandaquit was the only teenager in the committee. This led to a zoom call with a man who was previously known as Lew Alcindor when he played a series of games against the huskies in the then HEC Edmundson pavilion more than 50 years ago.

“As soon as he spoke first and greeted me by name, it was super cool,” said Mandaquit.