Larry Nance Jr. a fan of Cleveland baseball team name change

Larry Nance Jr. is on board with the Cleveland baseball team doing away with the ‘Indians’ moniker.

“I think it’s the right move for a multitude of different reasons,” Nance said Monday during media availability ahead of Cavs-Pacers. “I don’t know when the name was in place. I think somebody came back on Twitter, it was like 1915 or something like that. We’ve evolved so much as a people, as a country since then. Whenever the name was founded, there were so many things, different rights that ... so many things have changed since then, so many positive things.”

“For me, if there’s a group of people that say, ‘Hey, we disagree with this, this is wrong,’ who am I to, as not a member of that group of people, to tell them, ‘You’re just being petty.’ Who am I? I don’t necessarily understand that point of view,” he continued. “To me if the Native American people don’t appreciate that name, then it’s time to go.”

“I’m not just a fan of the Cleveland Indians, I’m a fan of Cleveland baseball. If they change their name to whatever it may be, the Spiders, the Guardians I’ve seen out there, whatever it is, I’m still going to be a fan. Just because they changed the name doesn’t mean I stop loving the players, stop loving the manager.”

Nance tweeted his support of the change on Sunday night after the New York Times reported that the team would be dropping the name.

Asked if he had a preference, Nance went with the Spiders.

“I do like Spiders,” Nance said. “I’ve seen the logo with the ‘C’ into a spider, it looked pretty cool. I’m a Spiders fan.”