Cavs’ Larry Nance Jr. taking rookies to Browns TC was a good leadership move

Cleveland Cavaliers big Larry Nance Jr. is a native of Cleveland, and him taking three Cavaliers rookies to Cleveland Browns training camp on Wednesday was a good leadership move to get them more engaged with nearby fans/the community.

It seems as if Cleveland Cavaliers big man Larry Nance Jr. is going to be one of the team’s primary leaders for the foreseeable future, and that’s encouraging, considering he and the Cavs reportedly agreed to a four-year, $44.8 million contract extension before the start of the 2018-19 season (h/t Spotrac).

Though it was on a Cleveland team that was just 19-63 (per NBA.com) last year, Nance helped prove that extension was warranted and that he projects as a key piece in the rotation in coming years.

He had per game career-highs in points (9.4 on 55.4% effective field goal shooting), rebounds (8.2), assists (3.2) and steals (1.5) in his largest minutes-share of his career with 26.8 per contest (per Basketball Reference).

He, again, became more involved from a leadership perspective, too, and it appears that Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson have aided Nance to become a more vocal leader as well, and that’s a big positive for me with Nance taking ownership of that responsibility, and with the Cleveland Cavaliers likely very early on in their full-rebuild and needing more leaders outside of Love and Thompson to emerge, in particular.

Nance taking three Cleveland rookies in Darius Garland, Dylan Windler and two-way Dean Wade to Cleveland Browns training camp (h/t Browns Wire’s Jeff Risdon and highlighted by Browns’ Official Twitter) on Wednesday was a good leadership move, as doing that sort of thing further immerses them into the local community/gets them more engaged with Cleveland fans.

https://twitter.com/Browns/status/1156571507226755072?s=20

As you probably know, given that Nance Jr.’s father, Larry Nance, is one of the best Cavaliers ever and stayed local after he retired, Nance Jr. grew up in the Cleveland area, and is a well-documented Browns fan, and he’s understandably one of many Clevelanders that is fully-bought into the Browns being a very much-improved team that could potentially make a deep postseason run in the upcoming year.

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He wanted to share that Cleveland fandom with Garland, Windler and Wade, and I would imagine members of the Cleveland Cavaliers making an appearance at Browns training camp was an awesome sight for Browns fans who are, at least to a large degree, loyal Cavs fans, too.

Nance taking Garland, Windler and Wade to see Baker Mayfield sling it around the yard to receivers such as Jarvis Landry, Odell Beckham Jr., Rashard Higgins and David Njoku against a defense also filled with talent such as Denzel Ward, Damarious Randall and Joe Schobert had to be quite the experience for those aforementioned Cavs rookies.

Additionally, again, it was a nice way to get them further immersed into the local community and show support for one of Cleveland’s other major sports teams.

With the Cavaliers likely featuring several key young pieces in the coming years, this sort of thing is also crucial by veterans such as Nance, who is likely in his prime, to try to establish a team that has a strong culture focused on team-oriented ball that wants to get players fully engaged with the local community/fan base to show appreciation as well.

Nance taking the youngsters to Browns training camp warrants a big thumbs up from me, as you probably would guess at this point, and it’s becoming more and more clear that guy gets it, if you will.

I’m sure Cleveland head coach John Beilein and the coaching staff, along with the organization in general, would say the same.