Season review: Pete Nance
Nance still needs to show he can be an NBA player.
Basketball hasn’t gone positionless the way many thought it would a decade ago. Centers were thought to be the ones to go extinct but instead, they evolved. This has led to the desire to find bigs that can reliably pass, dribble, and shoot paired with the size and skill you’d come to expect in a traditional center.
Pete Nance fits that ideal at first glance. He’s 6’ 10” and shot 35.8% from distance on 4.9 attempts per game in the G-League for the Cleveland Charge. Nance went 5-10 from three on Jan. 10 against the Fort Wayne Mad Ants. Six days later, the Cleveland Cavaliers signed him to a 10-day contract that became a two-way deal a month later. This wasn’t a coincidence.
The outside shot is as dependable as the numbers suggest. Nance can space the floor incredibly well and his shot is quick enough to get off when a center is trying to close out to him. Three-point volume was an issue at the beginning of the season, but that steadily grew as Nance became more aware that this was his path to the NBA.
Nance also displayed a respectable handle for someone his size with the Charge. He was comfortable pushing off of defensive rebounds which created broken-court scenarios in a way that making an outlet pass to a guard wouldn’t. Nance showed enough awareness that he could read defenses and find the open man more often than not in these situations.
These are things the Cavs desperately want from their backup center. It’s also two abilities that should transfer over from the G League to the NBA. The traditional center skillset is the issue.
The biggest difference between the NBA and G League is the caliber of center play. The drop-off between star centers and above-average centers is the most drastic of any position in the NBA. The gap widens when you compare starting-level centers to backups and so on. This becomes a chasm when you’re trying to compare backup centers to what you see from good G League centers.
Nance wasn’t dominant at the traditional center skills which is a problem considering his size and the G League competition. He completed 67.5% of his shots within five feet with the Charge. Comparing G League to NBA stats is tricky, but that number would put him in about the 41st percentile for finishing at the rim for NBA centers. That isn’t bad, but he wasn’t going against NBA centers. Nance’s current offensive skillset isn’t what it needs to be inside for him to be passable in the NBA.
Many professional scouts are leery of making too much of strong interior scoring in the G League. Some go as far as even discounting it all together when evaluating players given how poor interior defense is.
They don’t play the same position so this is an inexact comparison, but Sam Merrill completed 68.1% of his shots within 5 feet last season in the G League. This past season in the NBA, Merrill finished just 47% of his looks at the rim. That drop-off isn’t surprising given the drastic difference in interior defense between the leagues.
Moreover, Nance isn’t an exceptional rebounder or defender for his position. His 8.2 rebounds per game were solid, but he was able to be moved off of his spot by smaller, sturdier centers. Nance improved some of the fouling we saw in the 2023 Las Vegas Summer League. This advancement combined with his size allowed him to be a good interior defender. The same can’t be said when he was asked to switch out to the perimeter. Nance’s length didn’t compensate for his lack of footspeed when defending in space.
Teams want modern centers to be versatile, but that can’t come at the expense of traditional center skills. This is the issue Nance faces. He got his two-way spot because of his shooting, but whether he can improve on traditional center tasks will determine if he’s ever able to earn a standard NBA contract.