Sixer Savior

Mareese Speights = the wildcard.


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Published: Mar 11, 2009

The 2008-09 Philadelphia 76ers are, almost inarguably, the most mediocre team in the NBA. They're 8-21 against teams with records above .500 (0-9 against the top three teams in the East) and 22-10 against sub-.500 teams (11-1 against the three worst). They're almost exactly .500, and not because they're good one night, bad the next. They're more like the control in a scientific experiment: They don't win or lose games; their opponents do. In a league where more than half the teams make the playoffs, that'll be good enough for postseason play and quick subsequent elimination. But unless the Sixers change something, they're mediocre, and aiming for more mediocrity.

David Dow

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Fortunately, the Sixers have a wildcard that other mediocre teams don't: Marreese Speights, their 6-foot-10-inch forward/center with the offensive tools that make scouts drool and the defensive lapses that would keep him on Larry Brown's bench until the kid was as old as the coach. Playing him 30 minutes a game would raise the Sixers' ceiling, at the risk of lowering their floor. But, with little chance of falling out of the playoff hunt, and even less chance of threatening any of the real powers by maintaining the status quo, it's a risk the team should take. The 76ers need to let Speights work out the bumps in his game, even if it drops that sparkling record against bad teams ever so slightly. The 76ers should, from here on out, dedicate this season to seeing exactly what they have in Marreese Speights.

Offensively, going from Reggie Evans to Marreese Speights is like replacing your old rickshaw with a jet. Speights can score fluidly with both hands (at a recent game, an out-of-town writer leaned over to me to confirm that Speights is left-handed. He's not) — and his jump shot may be the best on the team. He gets good elevation, and has a high release point and excellent body control. He looks natural. He's comfortable out to about 18 feet now, and could push that beyond the arc in a couple years' time. John Hollinger's PER, a stat that evaluates players on a per-minute basis, currently ranks Speights as the 31st most efficient player in the league, ahead of guys like Vince Carter, Carmelo Anthony and every other 76er. Speights is versatile. He's comfortable playing both power forward and center ("Whatever gets me on the court," he practically begs, responding to a question about which position he imagines himself playing).

That's not to say that playing Speights more is a cut-and-dried decision. Speights is a bad defender, even for a rookie big man. He misses rotations, can lose his man and will often guess what a play might be instead of reacting to what it is. In a recent game against the Hornets, Chris Paul beat his man and came towards the key, where Marreese happened to be standing. When Paul came within a few feet of him, Speights dove to his left, attempting to intercept a pass that hadn't even been faked. Paul, predictably, didn't make the pass and laid the ball in easily for two. The staff has noticed: When prodded to talk about Speights' defensive improvements, head coach Tony DiLeo briefly praised his increased effort before saying, "Certainly, if he's hurting us out on the court we won't have him out there." The answer came in a press conference, and sounded like a threat.

Still, if the Sixers want to surpass the mean, Marreese is the one piece they're not fully utilizing that could give them even an outside shot of doing so. They need to find out how, or if, he fits — and they need to do it soon. Early this season, the team struggled to adjust to Elton Brand's game, largely because the coaching staff didn't realize Thad Young and Andre Iguodala were less effective playing the wings than the two forward spots. They didn't realize this because they rarely tried it last year. These are the type of kinks the Sixers need to be working out with Speights now. Maybe Iguodala and Young can play the wings when Speights is at power forward — having an above-average shooter at the four may offset what the Sixers' young stars lose in moving away from the hoop. The point is that the team doesn't know, and they're only going to be able to find out by actually playing the guys together.

Admittedly, Speights might not actually be ready. He wants to be, and believes he can be: I caught up with the young big after a recent game and asked him, in no uncertain terms, if he was ready to play starters' minutes in this league. Speights, who can tend to mumble answers, or drop his head and offer cliché after cliché, looked up with a spark. "I'm ready for anything when coach puts me on the court," he said. "I'm capable of playing at any level, in any situation." (Yes, this was a leading question — who isn't going to say he thinks he can play? — but his strong answer speaks volumes all the same.) Still, if you play Speights 30 minutes a game, you're going to see more of those defensive lapses, and, truth be told, the experiment could fail, and the Sixers could be worse. But if the Sixers don't take that risk — if they accept their fate as a team good enough to stomp the bad and bad enough to fall to the good — they'll never know. They'll have shot squarely for the middle and hit it clean. They won't be average by default, they'll be average by design. And as a goal, that is well worse than mediocre.

E. James Beale tells you how to run your basketball team, baseball team, football team, hockey team, dogsled team ... at citypaper.net/sports.