Marreese Speights gives $25,000 to hometown
Marreese Speights wants to make sure kids from his hometown can get buckets too.
Marreese Speights wasn’t born Mo Buckets. It took a lot of hard work and practice in his hometown of St. Petersburg for Speights to transform himself from a really tall and good high school player to a quality NBA player on a team that set the record for most wins in a regular season. With that in mind, Speights has made sure to not forget about his home and after signing a nice contract with the Los Angeles Clippers this summer, Speights took advantage of his opportunity to give back to the community by donated $25,000 to the St. Petersburg parks and recreation department.
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According to Bay News 9, the money will be split across five different parks in the area so that each can get some of the upgrades that they need. To give the money Speights dropped into one of the local parks, which left a clear lasting impression on the kids in the area.
"“An NBA basketball player from St. Pete was at the recreation center,” gushed an excited Darrell Lee. “(It’s) really exciting because I never knew anyone who came from here can be in the NBA.”"
Perhaps most importantly though, Speights is not content with just a one time donation in hopes that it helps. He told Bay News 9 that he plans to make other donations in hopes to rid the area of some problems.
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"“I just said, ‘I’m going to do something for the city because when I’ve been gone throughout the year,'” said Speights, 29. “I’ve seen a lot of bad things happening with killings, and all that so I feel like I can help the rec centers out with after school programs, or summer programs, even more youth development kind of stuff.”"