Written by Jeff Rich

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This is one installment in a team effort by The Cleveland Fan, highlighting the top local sports figures by jersey number. Please weigh in with your thoughts, in the Boards. As David Letterman would say, “For entertainment purposes only; please, no wagering.”

Wham Nance with the right hand!

You could count on Joe Tait to say that once or twice every time the Cavs took the floor.  More than we loved the Tait call, we loved Nance; hell, Tait loved Nance too.  Conceding that Lebron James obviously tops the list, Tait has gone as far as to imply that Nance was the most talented Cavalier he ever saw play.  Sure, Cavaliers History only goes back about four decades and change, but if Nance is second on that list, he must have done something right.

He’s the best Cleveland athlete to wear #22 (according to us), and basically anyone associated with the Cavs would probably agree, based on the fact that the number hangs in the rafters at Quicken Loans Arena, making him the last Cavalier ever to wear the number he wore for all but one season in Cleveland.  He was assigned #6 when he first checked in with the Cavs, after being traded from Phoenix in 1988.

Chris Dudley, the 6’11” rebounding specialist from Yale was wearing it at the time.  On February 25, 1988, the 16-35 Phoenix Suns sent Nance, Mike Sanders, and first-round pick (which ended up being Randolph Keys) to the Cavs for current Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, Mark West, Tyrone Corbin, and two picks (Dan Majerle, Dean Garrett).  The Suns originally drafted Nance, the Anderson, South Carolina native, out of Clemson with the 20th pick in the 1981 draft.  Nance spent all or part of seven seasons in the Valley of the Sun, with the high point of his time there being when he won the inaugural Slam Dunk Contest in 1988.

He defeated Julius Erving, who he considers the best in-game dunker of all time.  He spoke candidly about the competition and his ability to dunk in a 2011 interview with Suns.com.  Nance talks about how he didn’t have a strategy with his dunks to take down the master, and how, in hindsight, he may have done things differently.  Notably, he mentions how surprised he was at the popularity of dunking from the foul line, which he claimed he could with relative ease.  He said he was better at it than Dr. J, even better than Jordan.  Their heels were on the foul line, and he claims he could launch with his only his toe on the line.

He won, so he did something right.  Something else he did right was working with Coach John MacLeod in his second season with the Suns to start and become a nice player in the league.  He didn’t start as a rookie, but appeared in 80 games.  After a lot of hard work after his first season, Nance earned a starting spot for the Suns, scored 17 points a game and led the team in blocks.  He would go on to start all 82 games for the next two seasons. 

Upon being traded to the Cavs at the age of 28, Lenny Wilkens encouraged Nance to work on his outside shooting, a suggestion that may have given Larry a few more years at the end, since he wasn’t taxing his legs so much being the inside player he was in Phoenix.  Assistant coach Dick Helm worked with him on his perimeter game and got on him when he didn’t shoot.  The end result was Nance stretching the defense, and keeping them honest with dead-eye accuracy from 18-20 feet.  He was also a lot more physical, filling out his 6 foot, 10 inch frame by lifting weights, which a young Nance didn’t care to do.  A little wiser in his years with the Cavs, he couldn’t stay away from the weight room.

I came to appreciate Tait’s call of Nance, even when it wasn’t “Wham with the right hand,” even though it was our favorite line when we were dunking on seven-foot rims in the driveway as kids.  He was so money on the baseline, inside the arc, that young Cavs fans didn’t mind emulating his mid-range game, fresh with Tait’s less emphatic call of Nance from 18 feet after Price brought it up between the circles.

He was an All-Star twice with the Cavs, in 1989 (when he was also a first-team NBA All-Defensive Player) and 1993.  In six of Nance’s seven seasons in Richfield and Cleveland, the Cavs qualified for the postseason.  Like all of the Cavalier teams that Nance did not play for, none of Nance’s teams won a title, but the run to the Eastern Conference Finals in 1992 was as far as the franchise had ever gotten at the time.

Along with Mark Price and Brad Daugherty, he was a key piece to the regular season success of the Cavaliers.  Like Daugherty, you wouldn’t necessarily say that Nance did anything great, but he just did everything really well.  Though Nance claimed that he was most proud of winning that ’84 Dunk Contest, his best tangible moments in any uniform came in Game 4 of the 1992 Eastern Conference Semifinals, a 114-112 win over the Celtics in OT.

Nance was 13 of 16 from the field in that game, which evened the Series at two games apiece.  After that big win at the Garden, the Cavs would win Games 5 and 7, before falling to Jordan’s Bulls in the next round, which denied them a trip to their first NBA Finals in franchise history.

About a month after his 35th birthday, on March 12, 1994, Larry Nance logged 25 minutes and scored 13 points at Madison Square Garden in a loss to the Knicks.  It would be the final game of his NBA career.  In all, Nance retired with 15,687 points in his career, which works out to 17.1 per game and 2,027 blocked shots.  You probably had to have been a fan of the Suns or Cavs to truly appreciate at least half of Nance’s career, but he was certainly a good one.

Nance still stays involved with the team, doing the banquet circuit, golf outings, and what-not, but his new passion is racing.  Last we heard, he was seeking sponsorship for his car that he likes to run at Norwalk.  He shared a front-court with a guy called Hot Rod, who knows nothing about cars and a guy named Brad, who spends his time on ESPN talking only about stock car racing.  I don’t know anything about auto racing, but I do know recall what it was like watching those orange and blue Richfield Coliseum Cavs, and I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like without Nance. 

He was something special.

Honorable Mention

Nance was the last player to wear #22 on the hardwood for the Cavs, but a few notable names, outside of Chris Dudley, who wore the number include Austin Carr (1972) and Jim Chones (1975-79).

I know we all like Jason Kipnis too, and even though we let Kyrie Irving in with less than two full seasons under his belt, we don’t have enough to go with to consider the converted outfielder from Arizona State.  Before the whole thing went south last year with the Indians, Kipnis looked like an All-Star, and I was among the many who used the word snub when that All-Star thing didn’t become literal.  However, even without any guarantee that he can build on his 14 HR, 76 RBI, and 31 stolen bases, we’d like to see Kipnis on that Larry Nance level in five years.  We have to hope he’s still wearing an Indians uniform then, and maybe even some rings, because the future can be as awesome as we choose for it to be in our heads.

On the gridiron, the new Browns don’t offer much at this number.  Buster Skrine wears it now, and we don’t feel much better about him than we did about Brandon McDonald, Mike Bell, or Tim McTyer.  I’d have a hard time with some of the Belichick era old Browns too, and I’d be surprised if anyone out there could tell me much about Ricky Powers or Vince Newsome either.  Before that, from 1985-1990, Felix Wright was part of that Dawg Pound secondary.  Wright picked off 26 passes and took 2 back for TDs in his six years with the Browns.  In addition to making a highlight reel hit that would likely draw a healthy fine and a penalty flag today on Don Beebe, Wright led the league in interceptions in 1989 with 9.