The Pacers have reached an agreement to sign free agent forward/center Larry Nance Jr. to a one-year contract, sources tell Shams Charania of ESPN (Twitter link).
While Charania refers to it as a $4MM deal, it sounds like that figure is rounded up — Tony East of Circle City Spin tweets that it’ll be a minimum-salary contract. Nance will earn roughly $3.88MM, while Indiana carries a cap hit of approximately $2.45MM.
Nance, 33, is an 11-year NBA veteran who has appeared in 581 total regular season games for five teams since entering the league as the 27th overall pick in 2015. A reliable frontcourt rotation player for most of those 11 seasons, Nance has been limited to just 59 appearances over his last two years in Atlanta and Cleveland due to health issues.
Nance dealt with hand and knee injuries in 2024/25, then missed nearly six weeks with a calf strain during the first half of the ’25/26 season. Even after he returned, the Ohio native played a limited role for the Cavaliers, establishing new career lows in points (3.7), rebounds (2.7), and minutes (12.8) per game, as well as field goal percentage (41.9%), across 35 outings.
The Pacers’ commitment to Nance suggests they believe he still has something left in the tank, though we’ll have to wait to see whether the team is giving him a fully guaranteed contract.
The club is technically too close to its first-apron hard cap to add another standard contract right now, notes Yossi Gozlan of The Third Apron (Twitter link), so a trade or cut would be necessary to bring Nance aboard unless he’s signing a non-guaranteed Exhibit 10 contract, which wouldn’t count against the cap or apron.
Center Micah Potter is currently on a non-guaranteed minimum-salary contract for 2026/27, while Quenton Jackson‘s minimum salary is only partially guaranteed for $275K for another week, so one of those two seems likely to be the odd man out if the Pacers do have to make a cut.
