Cleveland Cavaliers: Grading Larry Nance Jr.’s play thus far in 2019-20

Larry Nance Jr. has done a pretty nice job for the Cleveland Cavaliers, but there’s still some areas he’ll need to address in his game to continue to improve. Here, we’ll grade his play on both ends thus far in the 2019-20 season.

It was just before the 2017-18 season where the Cleveland Cavaliers would trade Kyrie Irving to the Boston Celtics in a deal that would seemingly lead to LeBron James‘ departure, of which James is now on the Los Angeles Lakers via unrestricted free agency. Irving has since gone to the Brooklyn Nets via unrestricted free agency, anyhow.

In the trade, though, the Cavaliers would get back Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic, and a 2018 first-round pick from the Nets that turned into Collin Sexton. The Thomas experiment was short-lived however and the Cavs would flip him, and add Channing Frye at the time and Cleveland’s then-first-rounder to the Los Angeles Lakers for Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance Jr., son of the great Larry Nance.

Nance’s stint with the Cavaliers has been a fun one so far as it has been filled with many high-flying dunks. After signing a four-year extension before last season, it looks as if Nance will be sticking around for a long time and with that, we should see many improvements from him as he enters his prime.

Speaking of improvements, this season, Nance is averaging a career year in points per game with 10.1, and has taken further strides in relation to his three-point shooting.

Nance has also shown improvements on the defensive end and his overall game throughout this season to this point, which is currently on hiatus due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

With that being said, here, we will be grading Nance’s offensive, defensive and overall game thus far this 2019-20 campaign, starting with the offensive end.