- LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
- Marreese Speights
Marreese Speights, acquired for the little-used and oft-injured Xavier Henry, and Dante Cunningham, signed as a free-agent to a multi-year contract, were great finds given the team’s dire frontcourt needs and have provided — to varying degrees — low cost approximations of the player’s they’ve been charged with replacing.
Speights has been a good-not-great rebounder and viable scoring threat while responding well to the on-court tutelage of post partner Marc Gasol, giving the Grizzlies 9 points and 6.5 rebounds a game in 23 minutes. He’s a little bit more of a shot-blocker and defensive presence at the rim than Zach Randolph but obviously nowhere near as good a player.
The biggest tangible difference between the two — beyond Randolph’s relentlessness — is where their offense comes from. Though it’s a strength for both players, Speights is a somewhat better mid-range shooter than Randolph (making 43% to Randolph’s 39% last a season), but is more dependent on it for his offense, taking 43% of his attempts from mid-range compared to 24% for Randolph. And the shift from Randolph’s paint-oriented game — 73% of his attempts last season in the paint — to Speights’ mid-range-oriented game in the starting lineup has been the biggest drag on the Grizzlies’ offense this season.
The one area where they’re most similar is that Speights shoots nearly as much relative to his playing time as Randolph, and that quick-trigger approach might actually make the transition back to Randolph smoother because the Grizzlies haven’t changed the way they play radically with Randolph out.
