Magic look for instant offense from Speights
The nickname “Mo Buckets” still fits Marreese Speights.
During the early stages of a basketball game, the burly center resembles a heavyweight boxer prior to a prizefight. Speights wraps a white towel behind his neck and tucks it into the back of his Orlando Magic warmup shirt. The towel stays there until coach Frank Vogel tells Speights to get up off the bench and sub in.
Speights heats up in a hurry once he steps onto the court. On Friday night, during the Magic’s preseason finale, he checked into the game for the first time with five minutes remaining and scored seven points before the final buzzer sounded. Mo Buckets, indeed. “It’s my job to be mentally prepared when Coach calls me to go on the court and play basketball,” Speights said. “So my teammates always find me when I’m out there. It’s just my mindset.”
Speights didn’t play much during the preseason, but he lived up to his nickname when he finally stepped onto the court. No other Magic player scored at a faster rate than he did. Do a little arithmetic and you’ll discover he tallied 41.0 points per 48 minutes, the highest average on the team.
The Magic signed the 30-year-old over the summer to a one-year, veteran’sminimum salary of $2.3 million to back up starter Nikola Vucevic and reserve Bismack Biyombo. Given the depth chart and the Magic’s up-tempo style of play, Speights likely won’t receive many minutes. But Speights gives Vogel an intriguing option if the team can’t get out and run or if its half-court offense sputters.
“I like what he brings to the table,” Vogel said. “There’s no question about it. He’s got great savvy. Defensively, he’s not going to go out there and overwhelm you with his athletic shotblocking or anything like that. But he understands [the value of ] body position and communication and carries the threat at the 3-point line, where you’ve got to guard him out there.”
Speights said he signed with Orlando because he grew up in St. Petersburg, about 105 miles away, and rooted for the team as a child. He has publicly pledged to accept whatever role Vogel assigns him, even if his playing time is limited.
The Magic’s up-tempo style doesn’t suit Speights, who is listed at 6-foot-10 and 255 pounds and doesn’t run the court as well as his fellow centers on the team. At times during the preseason, he looked a tad out of shape.
But you don’t need to be swift and agile to space the floor.
Speights always has been an enthusiastic mid-range shooter, but in recent seasons, he diversified his offensive game. Last year with the Los Angeles Clippers, he made 37.2 percent of his attempts from 3-point range.
This month, he sank seven of his 16 attempts from beyond the arc.
Speights added 3-point shooting to his repertoire when he joined the Golden State Warriors for the 2013-14 season. He made a big jump in his third season with the Warriors, raising his accuracy rate from 27.8 to 38.7 percent.
“A lot of it has got to do with confidence,” Speights said. “When you get confidence to go out there and play, basketball is really just a will to do it. And then my coaches gave me confidence. And when I was on Golden State, everybody was shooting 3s, so you’ve kind of got to learn how to shoot them. It’s just all got to do with confidence and consistency.”
Keeping a rhythm is especially difficult for players who come off the bench. It’s easy to cool down between the final seconds of the pregame warm-up period and the time a coach instructs a player to enter a game.
Yet Speights rarely seems to have any problems.
“It’s what you get paid to do,” said Magic swingman Jonathon Simmons. “It’s part of being a pro.”
True, but a few guys heat up off the bench better than others.
Speights’ teams always have asked him for instant offense. And he provides it.
The Magic expect him to do the same for them.