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 with the Rockets during the season, giving them that much more of a chance to stick around with an NBA roster. Although there's no way to prove that such under-the-table dealing went on, it seems to explain why a guy like Conroy who is one of the D-League's career leaders is still willing to stick around after having proven all he can at this level. It also explains why the Rockets were so keen on keeping an extra roster spot at the beginning of the season. With this system, players that are being called up are already familiar with Adelman's offensive and defensive schemes, something that is very valuable given that two roster spots are already occupied by Yao and TMac who are useless to the team this season. The Rockets are using the Vipers as a true minor league team (as much as the current CBA allows), which is very encouraging. This practice of giving 10-days to Vipers signees can also provide us an edge in getting players that the Rockets want but have no roster spots for, and playing them in a similar system to get a better idea of how they'd fare with the Rockets.
