Kendrick Perkins Says The Lakers Are ‘Soft, Arrogant’, And Then Backs It Up
There was a time when Kendrick Perkins was sad about leaving his Celtics teammates to head to Oklahoma City. Then he got paid, got to know Kevin Durant and the rest of the Thunder, and now... He’s become the anchor of the league’s sneakiest title contenders.
Back in March, he said this of the Lakers. “Phil is arrogant. Pau is soft. Kobe Bryant tries to bring out [Pau’s] toughness, but he’s still soft.” And Sunday night, he refused to back off.
“That was my opinion. I know people are entitled to their own opinions. I know people got a lot of different opinions about me. So that was just my opinion from the past battles that we’ve had in the past playoffs. It wasn’t nothing that I said out of character or was too crazy. I just spoke my mind in a way. The thing is you’ve just got to back it up.”
And back it up he did! With Perkins holding down the fort underneath the basket, the Thunder didn’t flinch down the stretch Sunday night, and L.A. was left heaving threes at the rim while Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant picked ‘em apart on the other end. ‘Course, it’s not over.
There was one last moment, when Bryant had some words for Perkins while they stood at the free-throw line with 14.1 seconds left.
“He just asked me if we were happy about this win,” Perkins said. “My reply was, ‘We’re happy about every win. Yeah, we are happy about the win and we are going to be happy if we win tomorrow.’ So who’s not happy after a win? But you know, it’s Kobe being Kobe.”
Can’t you picture Kobe approaching with his little smirk? Asking if Perk’s satisfied, as if to say, “Enjoy this while it lasts, because we’ll see each other again.” Indeed, as Perk notes, that’s Kobe being Kobe.
And, indeed, the NBA playoffs should be totally awesome.
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