Despite being committed to making the trip to Orlando with the Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday, Garrett Temple said that he knows it will be uncomfortable for players to be in the bubble. Temple said that he feels a “nervous anxiousness” about making the trek.
“There is no way to be comfortable when you think about where you’re going to be, for the amount of time you’re going to be there, and the restrictions that you have there,” Temple said Sunday afternoon. “The question of us being comfortable; that will not be the case whatsoever.”
“We will have to adapt. We will get tired of it. But in no way shape or form will anyone actually be comfortable, whether it be on the court or off the court, during leisure time or not.”
Temple said that he only briefly considered not playing in the NBA’s restart, but ultimately decided it was important to participate in order to continue to earn a paycheck and raise awareness about social justice and police brutality issues.
“I think we utilize the situation being in the bubble as a way to continue to push it because there are going to be so many eyes watching these basketball games,” Temple said.
The Nets forward, who is a vice president of the NBPA, participated in several of the players-only calls where players voiced concerns over the Orlando restart, as well as calls with the union. Ultimately, Temple said that he wasn’t surprised that even after the union representatives voted to move forward with signing off on the league’s restart plan, there were players were still hesitant about going.
“A lot of people have had second thoughts. I would imagine more than half of the league, of the players that are going, have had second thoughts,” Temple said. “We have meetings and sometimes people don’t speak up whether it’s young guys or guys that just don’t feel like talking in front of a group, so these things happen.”
Temple, whose partner Kara is due with their first child in mid-September, said he would leave the bubble to attend the birth if the Nets are still playing. The playoffs are slated to begin in mid-August and the Nets are currently the seventh seed in the East. The Nets would have an uphill battle to still be playing in mid-September, when the Conference Finals are scheduled to begin.
“I’m coming back to see my first child being born,” Temple said. “That’s not even in the question.”