For Larry Nance Jr, investing in the English Premier League was never about diversifying assets or becoming more relevant to a new section of the global audience. For him, it was all about following his true passion.
His passion for soccer runs so far that he recently admitted that if he could’ve traded his basketball talents for a soccer career, he would do it in a heartbeat.
“I’m good at basketball, that’s the reason I play it, but like my true passion is really like, if i could take my talent in basketball and put it in another sport I’d give it up for soccer in a heartbeat,” Nance Jr said on the latest episode of Brian Windhorst and the Hoops Collective.
Larry Nance Jr has had a decent NBA career being a solid forward-center. He was drafted by the Lakers, traded to the Cavaliers, followed by stints at the Trail Blazers, the Pelicans, and the Hawks before ending up with the Cavaliers once again. But he’s never been in the same conversation with the likes of LeBron James or Kevin Durant.
Off the field, though, he’s part of a small group of NBA players who also have a stake in soccer teams, including James and Durant. So he’s in elite company there.
The Cavaliers forward-center has had a minority stake in the Premier League team Leeds United for the past three years, along with TJ McConnell. These have been exceptional years for the team as they have been promoted to the Premier League last week itself. In fact, Nance Jr was in this interview right after they cemented their spot.
There is a relegation/promotion system in the Premier League, which means the bottom three teams every year go to the second division, and the top 3 teams from lower divisions get promoted to the Premier League after proving themselves.
Thus, for Nance Jr, this is a special moment in his journey and bond with soccer. Despite his father being an NBA player himself, for the first 14-15 years of his life, Nance Jr exclusively played soccer, and only when he grew too big to be anywhere on the soccer field except the goal post, he decided to pursue other avenues.
“It was actually basketball that was late in my life. I played soccer from the moment I could. My friends played, so as a kid, that’s what I wanted to do. You know, I played soccer for 15-14 years of my life and then eventually got too big and they tried to put me in goal,” Nance Jr said on the podcast.
Being sent to the goal means becoming a goalkeeper who is an integral member of the team, but the entire job is to stop the ball from going in. So neither does he get a chance to dribble nor attack the opponent's goal at any point.
In basketball, on the other hand, Nance Jr got to run up and down and play both defense and offense. But self-admittedly, it is still not enough to satiate the hunger and passion he has for soccer that he’s now going to live through his role as a minority owner of the Leeds United team.
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