Cavs: Larry Nance Jr.-Kevin Love two-man game should be one to watch

Larry Nance Jr. and Kevin Love will be entering their third full season together on the Cleveland Cavaliers.

At this point, it’s evident that two of the Cleveland Cavaliers‘ best bigs are still Kevin Love, Cleveland’s best offensive big, and Larry Nance Jr. For the latter, that’s in the all-around realm.

Nance is fresh off averaging a career-high with 10.1 points per game in 2019-20, and his catch-and-shoot ability from three-point range continued to improve, as he hit 35.2 percent of his triple attempts.

Plus, Nance has 7.3 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 1.0 steals per outing. Also, post-All-Star break when J.B. Bickerstaff took over the head coaching reigns, Nance even looked to be a viable 3 man option at times for the Cavs leading into the novel coronavirus-induced hiatus and eventually the end of their campaign.

Clearly, Nance’s arrow is pointing up looking toward next season. Love, meanwhile, is coming off while it wasn’t the smoothest season in terms of him and the team’s dynamic, looked more engaged in the last two or so months, and had a solid 17.6 points, 9.8 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game.

That was a pretty productive rebound campaign and one in which he hit 37.4 percent of his career-high 7.0 three-point attempts per game, which was nice to see after Love was only active in 22 games in 2018-19, mostly due to toe surgery. He’s still the Cavs’ best off-the-catch shooting presence heading into next season.

Anyway, even though Nance will likely be mostly a bench contributor once again, I’d imagine that he and Love should get plenty of minutes together still next season.

In that regard, with the two approaching their third full season as teammates, their two-man game should be one to watch for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Nance and Love seemed to have a better two-man game as this now-past season progressed, and again, heading into their third full season as teammates, I’d expect the two to play off each other better.

Granted, will the two have nearly the same passing frequency as a pairing as say, Love and Collin Sexton or maybe Darius Garland?

No, because Nance likely won’t be playing nearly the same amount of minutes as that pairing, and overall last season, only 3.3 percent of Nance’s passes went to Love, per NBA.com’s pass tracking data. But with both being highly capable passing bigs and with Nance continually improving as a perimeter shooter, I’d imagine the Nance-Love pairing should be one to watch in stretches together.

In Nance’s last 15 games active in 2019-20, of which Love was active in 13, while the frequency was sub-7.0 percent, Love did benefit from Nance’s passing, and hit 47.4 percent of his looks off of Nance passes. I’d expect to see Nance, even perhaps some at the 3, be able to deliver quality drop-offs to Love as a shooter more next season for Love to hit off of movement or Nance to hit Love coming off of curls.

Nance’s better handle should aid Love in helping him get better looks after some potential drive-and-kicks or drive-and-dumps, too.

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On the other end of the spectrum, Love should have better timing in terms of hitting Nance as a diagonal cutter near the rim to take advantage of Love drawing attention in the mid-post/feasibly as a threat from the corner.

Along with that, with Nance’s spot-up ability that he showed further growth in last season, Love should be able to hit Nance more from hard closeouts to him leading to extra passes/ball-swings to Nance.

Nance hit a pretty healthy 37.6 percent of his catch-and-shoot three-point attempts last season, per NBA.com’s shot tracking data, for context.

In that last 15 game sample of which Love was again active in 13 of those, 10.5 percent of the passes to Nance were from Love, and on those dishes then resulting in shots, Nance hit 46.2 percent of those looks.

Now Nance hit a ghastly 20.0 percent of his three-point attempts in those situations, but next season in perhaps more stretches together, I’d think their chemistry in that realm would be better with them in year 3 as teammates and Nance feasibly showing more growth as a spot-up threat.

Lastly, while the frequency was only 9.2 percent, Nance did demonstrate more post-up ability in 2019-20, and I could see Love be able to get Nance more deliveries via entry passes to the low block next season as well.

Love is a more than willing passer in those situations when that’s a reasonable scenario, and with Nance showing the ability to hit post-up fadeaways and/or get up quality shots operating out of the post, that should be something to look out for, too.

Nance placed in the 92nd percentile in 2019-20 as a post-up scorer, per Synergy Sports, and again, while the frequency wasn’t huge, I’d think some Love passes to Nance in that realm should lead to plenty of good looks for Cleveland. Nance could possibly look to get the ball right back to Love quickly at times if that’s there on occasion as a counter, too.

So to reinforce, when looking at next season, with both seeming to play off of each other better as last season progressed, I believe the Nance-Love two-man game is one to watch for the Cavs next season. For now, it’s to tough to suggest a passing frequency between the two, though.

Albeit heading into their third full season together as teammates on the Cavs, they should have a very good rapport with both being legitimate spot-up threats now, active off-ball players and high quality passers.