Larry Nance Jr.'s Postseason Blog



Wine & Gold's High-Flying Big Man Dishes on His First Foray into the Playoffs



The second half of the season has been a wild ride for Larry Nance Jr. – who began the month of February as a member of the Lakers, was dealt back to his hometown team, competed in the Slam Dunk Contest back in the city where he used to play, spent some time on the shelf with a hamstring injury and finished the regular season headed towards his first career trip to the NBA Playoffs. In his third year out of Wyoming, Nance Jr. averaged career-bests in scoring (8.7 ppg), field goal percentage (.581) and rebounding (6.8 rpg). In 24 regular games (including nine starts) with the team he grew up rooting for, the 6-9 forward/center notched double-figure scoring in 11 contests, doubling-up in five of those. As the high-flying scion of the Cavaliers legend prepares for his first foray into the Association’s “second season,” he sat down with Cavs.com to share a Playoff Blog on the Wine & Gold’s journey to the promised land …

Heading into my first NBA postseason, I’m both nervous and excited.

Obviously, as a basketball player, this is all you dream about as a kid -- playing in the NBA Playoffs. I'm thrilled to be in it and I'm excited to be in it, but at the same time, there's nerves with me because it is such a big stage and something I've never done before.

I try to pride myself on, even during the regular season, playing every possession like it counts. So, I think the transition will be just fine because of the hard-nosed, hard-playing guy that I am.

I also think my game will transition well because, from what all these guys are saying, the refs let you beat on guys a lot more. So that'll benefit me. You know I love to hack. (Obviously joking there.)

It’s taken some getting used to, switching Conferences midstream. But I’ve adjusted.

One of the biggest changes to me, oddly enough, were the flight times.

Larry Nance Jr. dunks against the Miami Heat on March 27, 2018 at AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami, Florida.

Photo by Issac Baldizon/NBAE via Getty Images

In the West, even in our Division, you still had to get on the plane for at least an hour-and-a-half or two hours to almost anywhere. Now, it's like we can zip up to Detroit in, like, 15 minutes. Chicago, Milwaukee -- they're all short flights. Even a trip to New York is nothing. Last week, we took a train from Philly to New York.

The travel is much easier in the East, and it actually does save a lot of wear and tear on your body.

Overall, it’s been great being back in Northeast Ohio.

I'm definitely learning how to deal with the distractions that being home comes with. But it's been good. And like I've said before, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

And with my younger brother, Pete, playing up in Northwestern, that'll be good as well. Hopefully, with him being fairly close, I'll be able to catch quite a few games.

I know a lot of guys – specifically LeBron – are going to go “Zero Dark Thirty” for the postseason, and I’m going to follow that lead.

I mean, if there's a guy that you want to take and learn something from, I feel like LeBron’s that guy. I think if he's kind of shutting things down for a while during the Playoffs, I think it would be beneficial for me to follow that lead.

So I'll definitely be stepping back a little bit.

"I want to be the guy, when Coach puts me on the floor, everybody is very comfortable with -- like: ‘OK, we're good.’" Nance Jr. On His Role

In terms of my role in this upcoming series against Indy, I’m going in open to anything.

To be honest, I'm not concerned about an entire end of the floor. Offensively, I'm just not worried about it. My job in this series is to help contain Victor Oladipo and the rest of those guys. So, when they get in the paint, it's my job to enforce that.

I’m not going into the series with any kind of expectations. I mean, everybody who's in it wants to win it. So, obviously that's where I'm at, too.

But to be honest, I just want to be the best teammate possible, and that's just doing my job to the fullest -- whether it's rebounding or playing defense. I just want to beat that guy. I want to be that dependable you-know-what-you're-going-to-get-every-night guy.

I want to be the guy, when Coach puts me on the floor, everybody is very comfortable with -- like: ‘OK, we're good.’

So it’s not like Coach has told me anything about my role and I’m not worried about it. Whenever I'm in there, I'm going 100 percent.