The Clippers have been trying for years now to get some kind of stretch-five that doesn’t absolutely suck. Marreese “Speighetti” Speights is just the latest attempt in what is has been a long string of abject failures. Speighetti does have a championship pedigree, which theoretically has some value I guess, but it is too early to say whether GM Doc’s latest acquisition will be a success. Let’s take a look at some other stretch bigs the Clippers have had in recent memory:
Spencer Hawes was not good on the Clippers despite having had success in the immediately preceding seasons with Cleveland and Philadelphia.
Byron Mullens was always a fringe NBA player even when the Bobcats tried to pretend he was starter material. There was never any hope of this guy getting minutes on a legit team like the Clippers.
Lamar Odom is now off-limits for jokes. I can say no more. Ideally he would have not been just a stretch big but a do-it-all player.
Brian Cook looks like the name of somebody who would be a stretch four or five. Let’s put him on the list without even looking at his stats. He was on the team for more than one season so if he was indeed a stretch big, he was probably the most successful out of this bunch. That’s a big if though.
Let’s throw Drew Gooden and Steve Novak on here because they both suck and it makes my point look better.
Looking at the above list, Speighetti needs to do very little to elevate himself to the level of “best three-point-shooting big man on the Clippers in recent memory”. Just one or two more fifteen-point games should do it, honestly.