Cavs: Revisiting Larry Nance Jr.’s best games of 2019-2020 thus far

#1: January 23 vs. Washington

The January 23 matchup against the Wizards on paper would make for a very good matchup for the Cavaliers. Both teams are likely to be stuck in the lottery for yet another year.

This is not how the game ended, though. The Cavaliers were stomped by the Wizards in much of this one, with a final score of 124-112, as KJG’s Corey Casey previously touched on. Despite the game not ending in favor of the Cavs, Nance Jr. still put on a show for everyone in Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.

Even though he came off the bench, he still finished second on the Cavaliers in points with 22, only behind Sexton who scored 29. In this game interestingly, as far as the box score goes, Nance Jr. was relatively quiet on the defensive end as a helper/disruptor, but the Cavs’ defense in general was lacking as far as rotations and overall stops. He finished the game with zero steals and zero blocks.

This could have been the result of the Wizards lacking a ball-dominant big, meaning that the man that Larry was mostly guarding on-ball would not have the ball in his hands very often throughout the game. Albeit once again, Nance Jr. was a monster rebounder the entire game.

He finished the contest with twelve boards, which doubled anyone else on the Cleveland Cavaliers’ roster and was enough for him to lead both teams in rebounds, as shown by Basketball Reference.

Surprisingly, following the pattern of previous games that have been covered in this list, Nance Jr. pulled down five offensive rebounds.

While the game did not end in the way that he would have wished, Nance Jr. did his part and then some in his efforts to capture a win for the home crowd fans.