Larry Nance Jr. Opens Up Before Pacers Debut at Familiar Arena

Larry Nance Jr. makes his regular-season debut for the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday at Smoothie King Center, where he played for the New Orleans Pelicans from 2022 to 2024.

The 33-year-old forward signed a one-year contract with Indiana in July. The team announced the deal July 9.

Indiana is his sixth NBA franchise. The Los Angeles Lakers drafted him 27th overall in 2015, and he has since played for the Cleveland Cavaliers twice, the Portland Trail Blazers, the Pelicans, and the Atlanta Hawks.

Over 581 regular-season games, Nance has averaged 7.5 points and 5.9 rebounds. Injuries held him to 59 appearances across his last two seasons in Atlanta and Cleveland. With the Cavaliers last season, he averaged 3.7 points and 2.7 rebounds in 35 games and played a career-low 12.8 minutes per game.

Nance shot 41.9% from the field and 33.3% from 3-point range in Cleveland. He had made 41.5% of his 3-point attempts in 2023-24 and 44.7% in 2024-25.

The front office, the coaching staff, and the players in Indiana have opened their arms to Nance, Kelly Oubre Jr., and the other new arrivals.

"Look, you guys don't know anything about me," Nance said. "So if I go out there and have a bad five minutes, all you got is five minutes of bad footage on me. So I think that's always like, whether that's true or not, it's daunting, just to get out and get a good start."

"And I think it was, I think it was important to get those preseason games and have them out of the way and play a couple minutes because I got my good or bad five minutes out of the way," Nance continued. "And hopefully we can start forming opinions of all of us together collectively at this point."

Nance sat out Indiana's preseason opener against the Minnesota Timberwolves in Ames, Iowa. He was the backup center against Atlanta and at Oklahoma City, then checked in after Jay Huff in Friday's 128-127 overtime loss to the Milwaukee Bucks and went 2-of-3 from the field for 4 points in 8:22.

Lead assistant Lloyd Pierce ran the bench that night with Pacers coach Rick Carlisle away, and he said Indiana gets different spacing when Huff is off the floor.

Huff joined Indiana in the 2025 offseason. He did not play in the first half of any of the four preseason games, according to Pacers On SI, and went 0-of-6 from 3-point range through regulation Friday.

Carlisle said Nance and Huff can each play center and power forward.

"We're going to need all our guys," Carlisle said. "We have some good versatility on our team, like Larry can play five and four. Jay can play five, and he's played some four as well, and [we] talked about Quenton, who can play both positions. Aaron can play both positions, and Aaron's played some four."

"So versatility-wise, we're going to need to use all the options that we have available, especially against an attacking team like New Orleans," Carlisle added.

Indiana's offense runs on process and speed. Nance has adjusted to its pace after 11 seasons spent learning different coaches and different vocabularies.

"When I got in the league, I was drafted as an undersized power forward," Nance explained. "Then a couple years later, I'm starting at the three in Cleveland and then back to some five and some four and some five again."

"So I think being able to move [around] positions early in my career allowed that, really helps with the decision-making process, really helps with the point-five decision-making and stuff like that," Nance detailed. "So not necessarily a specific spot, but a specific position that helped."

Defensive rebounding as a group is the part of the preseason Nance liked best.

"I think we were solid, defensive rebounding, I thought, outside of the last game," Nance said. "Who did we play last? The Bucks. Outside of the Bucks. I thought the Bucks, they hit the offensive glass pretty hard, but I thought we did a good job on the three other games, and we did a good job protecting our paint."

"We're trying to limit paint touches, force teams [into] difficult shots, and I thought we did that for the most part," Nance continued. "If the coaches are happy, we're happy, and at the moment the coaches are pretty happy."

T.J. McConnell did not play in any of the four preseason games, and the Pacers have not said what is keeping him out. When Nance was weighing Indiana over the summer, McConnell was the teammate he pictured being really fun to play with.

"Me and TJ haven't gotten a lot of time together," Nance said. "It just so happened he must have loaned me his good hamstring when his went down. So, ships passing in the night at that point. But we're two guys that — when I was thinking about coming here in the summertime, he was a guy that was like, man, me and him could be really, really fun together."

"Two high-IQ guys that understand the ins and outs of offense and all that type of stuff," Nance noted. "So I'm excited about it. We just haven't gotten to do it yet."

Indiana hosts the Dallas Mavericks in its home opener Friday at 7 p.m. ET, then plays at Brooklyn on Oct. 25 and at Milwaukee on Oct. 26.