Of the free agents the Sacramento Kings acquired so far this summer, one new addition that has flown under the radar a bit is Garrett Temple.
Temple has bounced around quite a bit during his seven seasons in the NBA, playing for five different teams (including Sacramento) on short-term deals before earning himself a more prominent role with the Washington Wizards before the 2012-13 campaign.
Since then, Temple has gone on to become a steady contributor, culminating in a solid 2015-16 season where he had career highs in his averages of minutes per game (24.4), points (7.3), and rebounds (2.7).
The former LSU Tiger made the most of his increased opportunity and has now parlayed it into an opportunity to continue his strong play with the Kings.
With the shooting guard position being an area of inconsistency in recent seasons, Temple will have a chance to establish himself as a viable option for new Kings head coach, Dave Joerger to utilize.
One area in particular would be Temple’s ability to knock down 3-pointers from the corner.
As Matt Moore of CBS Sports recently tweeted out, getting good looks from the corners was something Coach Joerger excelled at last season with the Memphis Grizzlies, which was illustrated with this shot chart from shotanalytics.com.
In 2015-16, Temple drained 36 percent of his corner threes, just above the 35 percent threshold, which Kings TV Analyst Jerry Reynolds refers to as a “winning percentage.”
Temple does face some competition for minutes at the two-guard spot with Ben McLemore and Arron Afflalo also on the roster. However, he has shown flexibility to play both the point guard and small forward positions, which could mean integrating Temple into more creative lineups with his fellow shooting guards.
With the Kings depth chart and roster still somewhat in flux leading up to training camp, it will be interesting to see if Temple is able to prove himself to Coach Joerger in the early stages of this new-look team.
Should Temple earn himself a consistent spot in the rotation, there very well could be another uptick in his numbers coming off the best season of his career.
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