OAKLAND, Calif. -- The 6-foot-10 center pulled up from behind the three-point line against his former team.
Swish.
This season, Marreese Speights has hit more threes (22) than all of his previous seasons combined (19). He drained a pair against the Sixers in the Warriors' 117-105 win on Sunday.
Speights shot 3 for 17 from three in 205 games for the Sixers.
“I kind of did [have a three-point shot]. I just didn’t shoot it in games,” Speights said of his time with the Sixers. “I shoot one foot in front of the three-point line anyways. That’s something that I’m just working on to step one foot back and shoot more threes. A confidence thing.”
The Sixers drafted Speights with the 16th overall pick in 2008. He had played two years at the University of Florida. Once he got to the NBA, he was the second-youngest player on the Sixers his rookie season, only older than Thaddeus Young.
The experience of veterans such as Donyell Marshall, Theo Ratliff, Elton Brand and Andre Miller accentuated Speights’ newness to the league.
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“I got drafted there when I was 20 years old, so I was a kid,” Speights said. “That’s something that I look at that team like, ‘Oh, I was young.’”
Speights played the first three years of his career with the Sixers. In January 2012, the Sixers traded Speights to the Grizzlies in a three-team deal. The following year, the Grizzlies sent him to the Cavaliers.
He signed with the Warriors in the summer of 2013. By that time, he was 26 and had grown up over his travels around the league.
“I learned a lot from all the journeys I went through to get to this point,” he said.
Speights has found a fit in the Bay Area. He won a championship with the Warriors last season and is posting 7.2 points and 3.4 rebounds per game off the bench this season.
On Sunday, Speights surpassed those averages with 17 points, seven rebounds and three assists in 20 minutes. He went 7 for 10 from the field and 2 for 3 from long range.
That performance was actually mild compared to his previous two years at Oracle Arena against the Sixers. Last season, Speights posted 23 points, four rebounds, four assists and four blocks as a starter. In 2014, his first year with the Warriors, he scored a career-high 32 points along with eight rebounds and three blocks in only 26 minutes off the bench vs. the Sixers.
Over his career, Speights has averaged 13.4 points (56.5 percent from the floor) and 3.9 rebounds facing the Sixers. They are the only opponent Speights averages more than 10 points against in the league.
“The ball just goes in every time we play them at home,” Speights said. “It could be them, it could be other things, but I’m glad it happened.”