Marreese Speights Excelling With The Cleveland Cavaliers After Great/Terrible Trade

Why in the world did the Memphis Grizzlies pretty much just give Marreese Speights to the Cleveland Cavaliers?

I know that the Grizzlies have two great post players in Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol, but Speights looks very good playing for the Cavaliers. In fact, the more he plays for the Cavaliers, the better he seems to get.

I also know that the trade was made for financial reasons for the Grizzlies, but it was still a ridiculous deal, and the Cavaliers should be investigated for stealing so much in the trade. I don’t care how much money the Grizzlies may have wanted to save to spend at Graceland or whatever else they are going to do with it, it was a terrible trade for them and a great trade for the Cavaliers.

To recap the deal, the Cavaliers gave the Grizzlies Jon Leuer, a little-used forward/center who has some potential but was not getting many minutes in Cleveland. He played a few NBA D-League games this year, and did very well in those contests. I hope he does well, but he could never play well enough to make this deal make any sense at all.

For Leuer — and remember, he really wasn’t playing much at all in Cleveland — the Cavaliers received Speights, Wayne Ellington, Josh Selby and a future first-round draft pick.

A fair trade would have been Leuer for Selby, as Selby is currently spending most of his time with Cleveland’s D-League franchise. That would have made sense.

Getting a first-round draft choice made the Cavaliers the winner in the deal, and picking up Ellington, who has been a major contributor in Cleveland, made the deal even better. Plus, Speights has been a huge difference-maker for the Cavaliers, who were short on post players before his arrival.

In Memphis, Speights was playing 14.5 minutes per game and scoring 6.5 points per game. He was also pulling down 4.7 rebounds per game and was shooting 43 percent from the field. In Cleveland, Speights is playing 21.9 minutes per game and is scoring 12.6 points per game. He is shooting 46 percent from the field and is recording 6.2 rebounds per game. I

t’s natural that his numbers have gone up as his minutes have increased, but Speights has shown that he deserves a lot of minutes. He is a force inside for the Cavaliers, and he has had some huge games in his short time in Cleveland.

Even with any financial factors the Grizzlies were looking at, I don’t see why they ever gave Speights to the Cavaliers, along with everything else in that deal. Surely, he could be helping him if they had kept him, or they could have gotten something more out of a trade for him.

For a team like Memphis that is hoping to make some noise in the playoffs, it makes no sense to just give away good players, no matter what their contracts call for financially. I just don’t understand it at all.

The Cavaliers and their fans must be thrilled with the deal, and it looks like Speights is very happy playing in Cleveland and getting more minutes. Speights has been key to helping the Cavaliers make huge improvements, and he is making the Cleveland management look very, very smart and the Memphis management look very, very dumb.