The following is part of Raptors Republic’s series of pieces reviewing the season for the Toronto Raptors. You can find all the pieces in the series here.
Money, status, and temptations lurking around every corner. Young and rich NBA athletes can easily get drunk off this wonderful cocktail. As Oren Weisfeld reported back in 2023, the anchoring presence of vets are in high demand to keep the 20-somethings on track.
This past season, Garrett Temple anchored a ship full of young money millionaires. He shepherded a conga line. He spent time with the rookies, even attending Leafs games with them after the season. He got up to celebrate when Ja’Kobe Walter hit a triple in a meaningless end-of-season game against the Sixers.
As a vet who liaised between the coaching staff and players, Temple’s value came in helping rebuild a winning Raptors culture, even if it was just laying down the cement. As teams like the Suns have shown, it’s easy to cobble a roster full of great players, but it’s another thing entirely to establish a culture and then find personnel who fit the mold.
This past season’s biggest positive takeaway: on-court performance never brought down team morale. And Temple’s value – perhaps his biggest value – came from embodying the catch-all cliche of “staying ready.” His ability to do this when his on-court impact was close to nil made it even more impressive. When he played slightly over 33 minutes in April against the Mavs – the most minutes he played in a single game all season – he didn’t seem winded despite rarely getting double-digit minutes in a game (though he did suffer a left-knee injury in the following game against the Spurs).
There are only five players currently older than Temple: LeBron, CP3, Kyle Lowry, P.J. Tucker, and Taj Gibson. When an undrafted player like Temple maintains a 15-year playing career, his presence alone set an implicit and explicit standard for every player to “stay ready.” He was akin to that old guy at a gym who’s well past their athletic prime, but maintains a physique so strong and training regimen so intense that it makes 20-somethings say, ‘Damn, I need to step up my game.’ That was the Temple effect this season – if old man Garrett stayed ready riding the pine, then who are you Scottie Barnes, Ja’Kobe Walter or any Raptor minus Jakob to let yourself go and mail it in?
Temple’s legacy will depend a lot on how the Raptors do next season. If they don’t succeed in the near future, his legacy will be left in the dustbin of Raptors’ losing seasons. If they succeed, however, his veteran presence will be praised for having helped lay the foundation of the rebuild. And, hopefully, he’ll continue to be involved as an assistant coach.
In the analytics-obsessed world of basketball, it’s hard to see value when no number can justify Temple’s off-court worth. But being a 15-year vet on a vet minimum, a family man, a VP for one of the world’s wealthiest unions, and a pro in every sense of the term was enough to command the respect of the team and its franchise player.
