Gradey Dick<\/a> said on why being at the Covenant House was important to him. \u201cIt\u2019s important to find (interests) away from basketball \u2026 the grind is pretty intense. Just knowing that every single day you\u2019ve got to keep sane and not always worry about basketball 24-7.\u201d<\/p>\nDick, like Jamison Battle and Collin Murray-Boyles, who were also in attendance on Friday, undoubtedly picked up some of that perspective from Temple in their time together. Yet there was one important skill the young Raptors needed on Friday that the veteran was no help with.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy cookie decorating skills are horrendous,\u201d Temple said with a grin. \u201cI leave that to my five-year-old and my three-year-old, who are pretty good \u2026 I think they got me beat.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Dick, he was far more confident in his ability to adorn the festive snacks, referring to his styled cookies as \u201camazing\u201d after getting some lessons from the youth he spent time with on Friday.<\/p>\n
An assessment that was corroborated by Covenant House CEO Mark Aston, describing the quartet of Raptors as “not only excellent basketball players, but they’re excellent cookie decorators.”<\/p>\n
But that’s not all the third-year guard took from the evening, however.<\/p>\n
\u201cBringing a smile just from making cookies is a little thing, but it goes a long way,” Dick said. “I feel inspired talking to these kids and learning about them and their stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those are the moments in which the 22-year-old from Wichita, Kan., finds himself connecting most with the folks in the melting-pot of a city he now calls \u201chome.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important that I get to do things like this. I get to meet people from different cultures and different backgrounds and learn their stories. But at the end of the day, we\u2019re not all too different. It\u2019s pretty cool to come here and see that.\u201d<\/p>\n
And it goes without saying that connection is often a two-way exchange. On the other side, members of the Covenant House also left the event feeling galvanized.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe young people are excited, volunteers are excited, staff are excited,\u201d Aston said of hosting the Raptors for the first time since 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause they\u2019re role models in our communities \u2026 people look up to them. They\u2019re inspired by what the Raptors do. And to have an opportunity as a young person to directly sit down and talk with a member of the Raptors is a really big deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes a young person feel valued, right? So many of these young people have had such difficult times, and have really not felt valued or confident \u2026 (having the Raptors visit) just makes you feel good, and I think that\u2019s what those young people are feeling today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Covenant House operates 365 days of the year and has served nearly 3,000 youth just in 2025.<\/p>\n
As for the influence and inspiration, as Aston described, that is as much a responsibility as it is a privilege, something the Raptors organization is aware of.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing able to give back in a meaningful way \u2026 (is) something we\u2019re aspiring to do moving forward,\u201d Brandon Gibbs, the Raptors’ manager of social impact, told Sportsnet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe play the game of basketball and have a lot of fans that support us, but if we\u2019re not able to be in the community, working with them and supporting them as best as we can, there\u2019s no point.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cStaying connected to the city is great for the game of basketball, the city, the country, the fans and the youth that we inspire to serve.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 From the endless travel sandwiched between practices, personal commitments, and, of course, playing basketball, the grind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-357672","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"(Left](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Raptors-Covenant-House.jpg\")
(Left to right), Collin Murray Boyles, Jamison Battle, Garrett Temple and Gradey Dick of the Toronto Raptors. Dec. 19, 2025. (Courtesy of Covenant House)<\/p>\n