Kendrick Perkins is averaging 7.3 points and 8.1 rebounds per game; he missed the first 43 games of the year, during which the Celtics went 33-10, went 5-1 against the Bulls, Heat and Spurs, and had the best record in the Eastern Conference; and immediately upon getting traded, it was announced that he would miss an additional two to three weeks with an MCL sprain. And yet I'm supposed to believe that swapping Perkins and Nate Robinson to Oklahoma City for Nenad Krstic and Jeff Green was a catastrophic mistake, that the Bulls and Heat suddenly became the front-runners in the East, and that Danny Ainge no longer knew what he was doing.
Can a 7-foot role player be overrated? If his name is Kendrick Perkins, then yes.
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Kendrick Perkins was just a role player.
He was a very, very good one, to be sure. With him, Rondo and the Big Three in the starting lineup, the Celtics never lost a playoff series. Perkins provided the Celtics with necessary size and defense, and made it so that Kevin Garnett didn't have to guard the likes of Pau Gasol and Dwight Howard on a nightly basis. He wasn't much of a scorer, but he was still good enough from within 10 feet that he was never an offensive liability. But in the grand scheme of things, Perkins was just a role player. You can romanticize his 7.3 points and 8.1 rebounds all you want, and I won't even argue that he wasn't a perfect fit in the Celtics' starting five. But Shaquille O'Neal is also a very, very good role player, and while his 9.3 points and 4.9 rebounds aren't as impressive, it's not the monumental drop-off that everyone thinks it is.
Let’s look back at the Pistons from a few years ago. Following their 2006 defeat to the Miami Heat, the team chose to let Ben Wallace leave to Chicago for the now-clearly-absurd price of $60 million. Many felt that the Pistons had no true superstar, that their success was linked to the comradely and chemistry of their starting five, and that if anything, Ben Wallace was the heart and soul of the franchise. But the team did fine without the back-to-back-to-back-to-back Defensive Player of the Year, and went to the conference finals in ‘07 and ‘08 and very well could’ve in 2009 had Chauncey Billups not been traded to the Denver Nuggets. Flash forward to 2011, and we see a Pistons team still with three of their five starters from the 2004 championship lineup: Ben Wallace, Tayshaun Prince and Richard Hamilton. There’s a reason this current Pistons squad isn’t 60% as good as they were when they had that old lineup: the two players they lost, Rasheed Wallace and Billups, WERE the team. When Big Ben left, he was replaced by Jason Maxiell, Nazr Mohammed, Antonio McDyess and Chris Webber, and the team did fine, but when Wallace and Billups were replaced by Ben Gordon and Charlie Villaneuva, the team went to hell.
As long as Boston has Rondo, Allen, Pierce and Garnett, the team will be fine. The Celtics pushed the Magic to Game 7 of the semifinals two years ago with Kevin Garnett missing every game of the series. Who doubts that they would’ve won that series if Perkins had been hurt instead of Garnett? No one. Of course, the Celtics will certainly need a healthy team in order to get through the East, and they won’t have that for a little while as Shaq gets healthy (though they’d have the same problem with Perkins). But they should be close to the same team, if not a better a team, when the playoffs roll around.
And a do mean better because lost in all the Perkins backlash is the fact that Jeff Green is pretty darn good. Big enough to play forward but athletic enough to fill in for Pierce and Allen, Green is the player Boston's desperately needed since they lost James Posey three years ago. Marquis Daniels, Stephon Marbury and Tony Allen couldn't be that player, but Green can. Now Boston can go small by putting Garnett at center, or big and have either Davis, Shaq, Krstic or Murphy fill in.
Not to mention that they’re getting Green for someone who they would’ve lost anyway. For all the money they’re paying their four All-Stars, there’s no way the Celtics would’ve been able to match the contract Perkins wanted. So instead of letting him vanish into thin air, they got Jeff Green, who they can keep on board as Garnett, Pierce and Allen continue to age. The Celtics now have something that the Utah Jazz and Indiana Pacers didn’t when their veteran leaders chose to retire a backup plan. If and when the Big Three retire, they’ll still have Rajon Rondo, Jeff Green and a plethora of cap room to spend on a superstar. That’s certainly better than the alternative.
So to summarize: rather than keeping Perkins on board for the rest of the season, and losing him in free-agency for absolutely nothing, they got Jeff Green, arguably the best bench player they’ve had in the Garnett era, who’s a much better player than Perkins and who can stretch the floor ala James Posey (as well as save Pierce and Allen from playing 40 minutes a night like the ‘87 Celtics had to do), while still retaining Shaq, who’s about 90% of what Kendrick Perkins was anyway. Was this really bad decision by the Boston Celtics?
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