Orlando Magic: The underrated value of Marreese Speights

The Orlando Magic have done well this offseason in adding veteran players who will help them improve immediately. Marreese Speights is one such player.

Despite being a team with a young core, the Orlando Magic went out and got some veteran players this summer to help push them closer to playoff contention this season.

Of those additions, center Marreese Speights was perhaps the most surprising, with the 29-year-old joining the Magic after a year with the Los Angeles Clippers.

Obviously Speights will bring much-needed leadership to the locker room, especially having spent three seasons with the Golden State Warriors prior to his stint in L.A.

But there is reason to believe he can be so much more than this, and could wind up being more integral to the team’s on court plans than first thought. Here’s why.

It starts with the price, and at a reported $2.1 million for the one season he is contracted to the team, that is a steal. Even if Speights doesn’t work out or struggles to adapt to his new team, he is on the kind of deal that contending teams love to get involved with around the trade deadline.

Not that it’s unlikely this partnership won’t work out. Speights appears to be ecstatic to be playing in Florida again for the first time since college.

But if the team wanted to move him or a playoff team needed a postseason rental to add depth to their bench, the Magic could expect a second round pick in return.

Beyond that, however, Speights brings some much-needed floor-spacing for the team. He shot 37.2 percent from deep last season, while taking an average of 3.4 three pointers per game.

To give you an idea of how useful that would have been for his new employers last year, if he’d shot that percentage in a Magic uniform, it would have been the fourth-highest mark on the team, and second overall if you take out the 50 percent Marcus Georges-Hunt shot (he appeared in five games off the bench) and the 40.9 percent of Jodie Meeks (played in 36 games because of injury).

Speights took roughly the same amount of long range efforts each night as Aaron Gordon (3.3), with the key difference being Gordon converted 28.8 percent of his efforts. Even Evan Fournier (35.6 percent) and Terrence Ross (34.1 percent), two key offensive contributors for this team, couldn’t boast the same numbers as Speights.

This becomes even more useful because the Magic ranked second-to-last in the league in three-point shooting last season at 32.8 percent.

More than that though, he complements the other bigs on this roster, something which has not always been the case.

Whereas the last five years has been about stockpiling young talent and nabbing the odd veteran, all while trying to figure out how they fit together later, there looks to be more cohesion to this group.

The Magic’s two current bigs, Bismack Biyombo and Nikola Vucevic, are not known for spreading the floor.

More from Hoops Habit

• 7 Players the Miami Heat might replace Herro with by the trade deadline
• Meet Cooper Flagg: The best American prospect since LeBron James
• Are the Miami Heat laying the groundwork for their next super team?
• Sophomore Jump: 5 second-year NBA players bound to breakout
• NBA Trades: The Lakers bolster their frontcourt in this deal with the Pacers

Biyombo in particular is the classic rim protector and screen-setter, which is a great asset for the team to have.

He makes the life of poorer shooters like Elfrid Payton easier by setting rock hard screens for them to slip around and get open looks.

We don’t expect Biyombo to hit and make threes and that’s fine, but the fact is he’s never attempted a three-pointer in the NBA. Having Speights available diversifies what they can do.

The same applies to Vucevic, but for an entirely different reason. In fact, this may be the key factor to signing Speights in the first place.

Vucevic did look to expand shooting range last season, attempting one three-pointer per game and converting on just over 30 percent of those.

This number isn’t good enough, but when you consider he attempted 75 threes last season and 26 combined his first five years in the league, he is at least trending in the right direction.

But really, the signing of Speights ensures that even if Vucevic gets traded, which seemed more likely than ever after Biyombo joined, the team won’t miss a beat.

Vucevic is owed just over $12 million over the next two seasons — a team-friendly contract given his abilities.

But getting that off the books would mean they could go after more notable free agents next summer, especially with Biyombo around long-term, not to mention what players or picks the team could get in return for a 26-year-old center with a diverse offensive game and a willingness to shoot from deep.

This makes Speights the perfect, chea, alternative to back up Biyombo if Vuecvic is traded, even more so because the argument could be made Speights is the better defender of the two.

Even better, Speights was better than Vucevic in the following statistical categories last year as well: Effective field goal percentage (53.9 percent to 48 percent), win shares (4.2 to 4.0) and free throw shooting (a huge difference of 87.6 percent to 66.9 percent).

The amount of times both men got to the line (1.7 per game for Speights compared to 2.1 per game for Vucevic) didn’t even differ that much either.

The point being that Marreese Speights was a great get for the Orlando Magic.

If the team stays as it is, he is the perfect mentor to guys like Aaron Gordon and Jonathan Isaac, and he brings a threat from deep that some of the roster’s more traditional centers cannot.

But if the team makes a move and ships out Nikola Vucevic, then Speights can also fill that space and in some areas surpass what Vucevic was doing anyway.

Next: The biggest winners and losers of 2017 NBA free agency

Speights is great get for this team, both in the short- and medium-term.