Larry Nance, Jr. put up a perfect tribute to former Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak

For most of us, there are very few differences in the way we experience fantasy sports and real sports, at least in the way we interact with the teams involved. You’ll likely never know most of the players on your favorite team any more personally than you’ll know the fantasy ones.

Things are more real for those actually involved in organizations. Coaches, general managers and team presidents get fired all the time, just like players are traded away, and for those inside the team’s facility those moves — justified or not — hit a little bit differently than just another headline coming across a social media timeline.

For Los Angeles Lakers forward Larry Nance, Jr., now-former Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak was the man who took a chance on him as a rookie with a late first-round pick in what was seen by many pundits as a reach at the time.

Nance has obviously made such prognostications look foolish with his level of play, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he felt at least somewhat indebted to Kupchak for giving him his first NBA shot.

Who knows if that’s why Nance changed his Twitter avatar at some point after Kupchak was let go, but it was a nice gesture nonetheless:

No, this doesn’t mean Nance doesn’t respect the new regime or their decisions or any drama of the like. This appears to just be a classy move from Nance to show gratitude to his first ever NBA boss on a whirlwind day in Los Angeles.

Harrison Faigen is co-host of the Locked on Lakers podcast (subscribe here), and you can follow him on Twitter at @hmfaigen.