NBA Golden State Warriors

Marreese Speights Majorly Impactful To Early Success For Golden State Warriors

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By @TheSizzle20

Marreese Speights

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With David Lee having played only seven minutes total over the first 15 games of the 2014-15 NBA season for the Golden State Warriors, new head coach Steve Kerr has had to find a way to get production from the position still. Draymond Green has been a big contributor in that regard, but Marreese Speights’ contributions off of the bench have been both incredibly valuable and equally surprising.

In the 14 games that he’s played in, Speights is averaging 12.6 points and 4.4 rebounds per game while shooting 60.3 percent from the floor. While that may not seem like much, he’s putting up those type of numbers in a mere 15.5 minutes per game of playing time.

On numerous occasions already this season, Speights has entered the game and changed the complexion of it in favor of Golden State. He’s rebounding with a new level of force, scoring with the most efficiency of his career, and maintaining the aggressiveness that we’ve always seen from him on the offensive end of the floor.

Though the terms “chucker” and “gunner” are often reserved for high-volume shooting guards, it’s hard to not put Speights in that same breath. Per 36 minutes, Speights is putting up 20.1 shot attempts per game. The fact that he’s hitting over 60 percent of those shots after only shooting over 50 percent from the field in one of his previous six seasons in the league obviously plays a major role in his success to this point.

There’s no denying the value that Speights has had to this point for the Warriors, but you have to wonder how sustainable it is. Last season with Golden State, Speights shot 54.2 percent from inside of eight feet and a mere 33.3 percent from 16-24 feet. Both clips have increased dramatically this season, though, with Speights shooting 74.1 percent inside of eight feet and 56.5 percent from 16-24 feet.

While you have to contribute some of his increase in efficiency to playing in Kerr’s offense and how potent that offense is, you also have to expect that it will regress somewhat closer to the mean as the season wears on. It’s been fun to see his performance to this point this season, but it also feels like a bit of an anomaly. The biggest question, though, is just how much of an outlier his start to the season is and how much he can be relied upon as the season wears on and down the stretch.

Cody Williams is a Senior Writer with Rant Sports. Follow Cody on Twitter @TheSizzle20, add him on Google and like his Facebook page.

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