Marreese Speights: B-
Marreese Speights. Mo’ Buckets. The former Golden State Warriors backup, capable of dropping 15 on any given night when he comes off the bench and looks to shoot, shoot, and, you guessed it, shoot.
It’s what he does, and so far the transition from Cole Aldrich‘s consistent hustle and defense at backup center to Speights’ offense has been exactly what should have been expected.
Speights has been cooler from three than the Clippers would have liked. He’s up to 33.3 percent with one make in his 15.7 minutes per game for the season, which, seeing as 42.4 percent of all his field goal attempts have come from beyond the arc, isn’t fantastic. Even still, he has helped space the floor and has shown the impact he can have in a hurry when he gets hot. 50 percent shooting between 16 feet and the arc is certainly better, and that range has given the Clippers’ backup guards a welcome pick-and-pop option to work with.
In a little over 15 minutes a night, Speights is now averaging 9.3 points and five rebounds (an impressive 1.4 offensive, seeing as he’s often quite far away from the basket), equating to 20.9 points and a career-high 11.3 rebounds per 36 minutes. That’s not bad at all, and he’s already helped the Clippers win a couple of games by heating up and providing bursts of scoring to fire up the bench. The issue, of course, is defense. It hasn’t been too atrocious and the second unit, especially at the start of the season, was far better than excepted defensively, but Speights is still a major weakness whenever he’s drawn away from the basket, attacked in pick-and-rolls, and he can’t protect the rim like Aldrich.
When he’s hot, Speights can be huge. Even when he’s cool, the threat of his shot helps space the floor. However, him making a major impact is going to come more inconsistently than Aldrich’s reliable defense night in and night out.
A B- seems fair.