Today it was announced that the Rockets have called up Garrett Temple of our NBADL affiliate the RGV Vipers to cover for injuries to Kyle Lowry and Trevor Ariza. Temple will be our third call-up from the Vipers this season, with the other two being Mike Harris and Will Conroy. All three were with the Rockets in training camp and signed with RGV after being cut.
As some may know, the Rockets have an interesting hybrid arrangement with the Vipers, where we control all basketball operations, meaning that the Vipers' front office and coaching staff are appointed by the Rockets. In effect, all the Vipers players are ones that the Rockets greenlighted. This creates such an advantage in that the Vipers can run similar playbooks to the Rockets and groom players to fit with the Rockets instead of the entire NBA.
However, with Temple's call up, it seems there's another advantage of this arrangement with the Vipers. Although guys like Harris, Temple and Conroy could have easily gone to Europe or Asia to earn bigger paychecks after being cut from Rockets' training camp, they opted to stick around with the Vipers. With their call-ups to the Rockets though, the players' financial situation are at least somewhat boosted (10-day contracts in the NBA are more than double the average NBADL salary). It makes one wonder if the Rockets had an agreement with these players before their signing for the Vipers, that they would at least be guaranteed a 10-day contract...
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