Washington Wizards, Where Are They Now: The Euro Resurgence (Jan Vesely and Oleksiy Pecherov)

Washington Wizards, Where Are They Now: The Euro Resurgence (Jan Vesely and Oleksiy Pecherov) by David Statman

Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be releasing player previews for everyone on the Washington Wizards‘ roster.

Garrett Temple, 2014-2015 regular season stats: 3.9 PPG, 1.7 RPG, 1.1 APG, .40 FG%, 14 minutes (52 games played)

Every coach in the NBA has their guy. For Washington Wizards coach Randy Wittman, it’s pretty clear that Garrett Temple is his guy.

Temple exemplifies everything that Wittman wants in his players: he’s tough, gritty, versatile and can defend. Unfortunately, though, there are plenty of players that you can find outside of the league that can do pretty much the same thing. Toure’ Murry, who’s joining the Wizards for training camp, is essentially the same player as Temple and he hasn’t found a permanent home in the league yet.

Temple played some backup point guard for Washington last year after the bench began to struggle with Andre Miller, but once Ernie Grunfeld acquired Ramon Sessions from the Sacramento Kings, his minutes became virtually nonexistent.

The 6’6″ combo-guard exercised his player-option with the team this summer, opting not to test his value on the free agent market.

While Temple is capable of contributing in the NBA, he lacks a single particular skill that could separate him from the rest of the guards.

Washington will continue to use Sessions as their primary backup guard and they acquired a number of wing players this summer.

With that said, it’s tough to find a situation where Temple will get serious minutes if everyone remains healthy.

Recently the Utah Jazz were reportedly interested in trading for Temple after Dante Exum suffered a torn ACL during international competition, but as of right now, Temple is still in Washington.

The Wizards typically go into the regular season with an open spot on the roster, but that’s not the case this year. They invited both Murry and Ish Smith to training camp, so perhaps they will eventually move Temple to a team that could actually use his services.

But for the sake of this preview, let’s assume that Temple will stick around in D.C.

He’s going to have a lot of competition for minutes this upcoming season — more competition than he’s ever seen before. The Washington Wizards will have John Wall and Bradley Beal get the majority of playing time, while the rest will be determined by their play during camp and preseason.

In camp, Temple will have to outplay Sessions, newly acquired Gary Neal, Martell Webster and Alan Anderson for a chance to play.

More Player Previews: DeJuan Blair

If Temple can consistently knock down the perimeter shot, then he might be able to get some unexpected playing time, just like Kevin Seraphin did this past season.

I’m still not completely sold on Neal, who hasn’t been very consistent throughout the course of his NBA career. Temple is a better defender than Neal, but he’s not an outside threat.

Neal was brought in to provide a scoring spark off the bench, but if he doesn’t perform up to expectations during camp, it really wouldn’t surprise me if he gets into a DeJuan Blair situation. After all, how many gunners had success playing for Wittman?

Temple will be the team’s third string point guard this upcoming season. At this point, we all pretty much know what to expect from him.

He’s a solid defender and he’ll occasionally hit an outside shot. While he probably won’t get much playing time, it’ll still be nice to have a somewhat reliable option off the bench in Temple.