LARAMIE — Larry Nance Jr. wanted to dunk. No, he needed to dunk. This yearning to soar is in his DNA. The son of an NBA slam dunk champion, Nance was born to play basketball above the rim. But eight months ago, a gigantic, pesky brace was wrapped around Nance’s right leg, protecting the ACL in his knee that was torn Feb. 18. The leaper was under strict orders not to leap. But the comeback for Wyoming’s star 6-foot-8 senior forward had to start somewhere.
“The first time I was able to dunk, I actually wasn’t supposed to,” Nance said.
Less than two months removed from surgery on his ACL, Nance was in the gym, going through another monotonous, nonbasketball workout with trainer Lance Schuemann.
During a break, Nance grabbed a basketball. The brace would not allow him to jump. So he grabbed the bottom of the net with his left hand, pulled himself up and slammed the ball home with his right.
“You could see all the color just flush from (Schuemann’s) face,” Nance said. “He got so nervous. I got a good little tongue-lashing for that one.”
Nance is now 10 months removed from the torn ACL, and dunking again with regularity. The preseason Mountain West player of the year might be the best player on the Front Range. He leads Wyoming (9-2) in scoring (13.5), rebounding (6.1), blocks (10) and steals (17). He also has been the anchor of a defense that has allowed an average of only 50.8 points per game, tied for third-best in the country.
“He makes up for so many errors that we make,” Wyoming coach Larry Shyatt said. “Because of his intellect and his positioning, he covers up a lot of wounds for us.”
Nance had no doubt that all of his statistics would return. His father, 13-year NBA veteran Larry Nance Sr., had three knee surgeries, but they didn’t derail a productive career. So the son knew he would be able to run, shoot and defend again. But the dunks — and the gravity- defying athleticism they represented — were not guaranteed. And doubt made the rim seem much higher than 10 feet.
“I was worried about my explosiveness,” said Nance, an Akron, Ohio, native who took a chance on Wyoming when he didn’t get offered a scholarship from big schools in the Midwest. “I didn’t know if I’d be the same.”
“Excruciating pain”
The long, lonely road to recovery began after an eerie sound.
With 14 minutes, 51 seconds left in a Feb. 18 home game against Fresno State, Nance jabbed left and took a one-hop dribble toward the paint.
“It’s a move I make 10 times a game,” he said.
This time, though, something went wrong. Nance heard a pop, then felt the snap. He knew right away the injury was serious, and he spent the rest of the half sitting on a trainer’s table in a daze, a towel draped over his head.
“From that point until I got up the tunnel after the game, it was pretty excruciating pain,” he said.
Nance had surgery March 5, then began a waiting game. For the first three months, his recovery consisted of little more than testing the extension of the leg.
“It’s a very monotonous process early on,” said Schuemann, the athletic trainer. “You’re doing the same thing over and over again because you’ve got to build up that strength, whereas other injuries you can jump around and do different things because you’re not surgically restricted.”
For four months, Nance was without basketball. By late June, he began jogging and shooting. And when he picked up full-speed running in early October, the Wyoming staff was confident Nance would be ready for the 2014-15 season.
But ready to play and ready to soar are much different. Nance wasn’t sure he had regained the latter until late October, several days after he returned to full practices with the Cowboys for the first time.
“Josh (Adams) was out of bounds, and he threw an out-of-bounds lob to me,” Nance said. “I felt my elbows at the rim. I just — I didn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day.”
Adams, a junior, almost didn’t throw the lob in practice that day. He had been scolded as an underclassman for making some risky alley-oop passes that were off target.
But as he noticed Nance peel off his defender, he thought, “What the heck?”
The whole team, Adams said, knew the resulting dunk was much more than a well-executed play in practice.
“I tossed it up and he was Larry Nance again,” Adams said.
This dunk extra special
Dunks became landmarks, and progress reached a fever pitch Nov. 22. In the second half of a dominating win over Colorado, Adams was dribbling on a fast break when he saw Nance coming clean down the middle of the paint. He tossed the lob and Nance did the rest, throwing down a jam over CU star Josh Scott that made the rounds on just about every highlight show.
“To me it was a lot more than just two points, just a dunk on somebody,” Nance said. “It was just a sigh of relief, finally getting the first one out of the way. It was just a weight off my shoulders.”
Shyatt said Nance still hasn’t fully returned to top form — a scary thought for Mountain West opponents — though he’s getting close.
Most important, Nance has returned to the family business of rattling rims.
“Being without basketball this entire summer, this whole time, was awful,” Nance said. “I’m just so happy to be playing basketball again.”
Nick Kosmider: 303-954-1516, nkosmider@denverpost.com or
Dandy dunks
Larry Nance Jr. has his own highlight reel of his impressive dunks during his Wyoming basketball career. Three that stand out:
Date: Jan. 24, 2012, against San Diego State
Description: Nance was running in transition when he took a pass at the top of the key. In one motion, he took off from just inside the free-throw line, his body outstretched like Michael Jordan’s famous logo, and slammed it home.
Quote: “That’s the one that everybody says is their favorite,” Nance said.
Date: Jan. 25, 2014, against Nevada
Description: With Wyoming trailing by two points at the end of regulation, Nance tipped a rebound to himself, gathered it and dunked it to force overtime, where he later made the game-winner on a hook shot.
Quote: “It was just such a change-of-pace type of dunk,” Nance said. “They had all the momentum. We just switched it and never looked back, and won that game in overtime.”
Date: Nov. 22, 2014, against Colorado
Description: Nance ran down the lane in transition, and point guard Josh Adams tossed a one-handed lob toward the rim. The ball didn’t go as high as Adams wanted, but Nance pulled it in anyway and threw it down over CU star Josh Scott.
Quote: “It was more gratifying just to see his eyes light up as he realized he could still do the things he used to do,” Adams said.
