Some Notes On Enjoying Kendrick Perkins

Watch enough basketball, and you will develop a few odd affinities. This happens on purpose, from searching for an outlook more advanced and personal than LeBron James is great or Gregg Popovich is smart or James Harden is as fun as a dental procedure. It is also partially accidental; some glimpsed highlight of a peripheral player drops past the short-term memory portion of you brain, for whatever reason, and settles in next to superstars' greatest hits. From that point on, this player's performances take on extra and hard-to-account-for meaning. A seed, blown by random winds, takes root, and suddenly you give a shit about Kent Bazemore or Amir Johnson or Jeremy Evans.

Or worse. I cannot fully justify or renounce this, but here it is: I once very much enjoyed watching Kendrick Perkins play basketball. This was a few years and career-stations ago, when he was the starting center for the champion Celtics and not, as he will be these next couple weeks, a bench-relegated fist-pumper and mean-mugger for the LeBron-Kyrie Cavs. He was never stylish or great, but back then, there was a delightful inelegance to his game that had not yet, to my viewing, tipped towards self-parody. As those Boston teams made deep playoff runs, each subsequent round populated to a greater degree by hyper-coordinated frontcourt Apollos, Perkins provided endearing contrast. So somewhere on the list of things I'll think and feel about the 2015 Finals—way down the list, maybe, but present nonetheless—will be a small pang of sadness for the now-obsolete Perk, and for the loss of a less sophisticated league that allowed him to flourish, in his way.

Kendrick Perkins, circa 2010, had a big blockish body, with a big blockish head set atop it. Officially listed at 6-10 and 280 pounds, he seemed even heavier than that, not due to any obvious pudge or muscle but because his motions suggested an almost molecular heaviness. He rebounded desperately, his toes maybe eight inches off the floor and his hands reaching up as if for a rope that might save him from dropping into a canyon. He set hard screens, and sent even harder stares in the direction of officials who whistled them illegal. He looked, running up and down the court, as if that running were the most difficult and painful thing he had ever done, and as if he would take out the frustration that difficulty and pain had produced on the next person to so much as dip a sneaker into the lane. Superficially, in size and scowl, Perkins resembled those athletes who mourners of boxing say might have made a great champion—the best heavyweight in America is actually Ray Lewis—but he wasn't, and they didn't.

Those Celtics took particular and outspoken pride in their togetherness, making a habit of pointing out that they never lost a playoff series with their preferred starting five intact, and Perkins was situated within their context as the supplier of menace and muscle. On one end, he was to keep the rim area clear of audacious guards and body up opposing plodders; on the other, he needed to do little more than snag loose balls and deposit layups.

This job description alone, in an era of basketball that grew more graceful by the year, would have set Perkins apart, but what really made him fun was that he wasn't all that good, to tell the truth, at any of it. (The happy exception was his knack for bothering the hell out of Dwight Howard whenever they'd cross paths.) The chief culprit seemed to be his slowness; Perkins was forever grasping at the air-space left by a just-departed ball or player. My enduring, amalgamated image of him is this: the Celtic offense has ticked through its options and produced a layup for Perkins, who stands a foot or so from the rim as the ball approaches his hands. He catches it and begins the exaggerated knee-bend that precedes every jump. In that time, some fast-twitch perimeter player sprints over, so that by the time Perkins jumps, this perimeter player is right in his way. His motion interrupted, Perkins throws the ball hard off the rim or backboard, lands, shakes his head in frustration, and begins his arduous run down to the other end.

The Celtics were good enough, then, that Perkins' deficiencies did not much matter, and that his positive attributes could be exploited. Some helpful soul on YouTube compiled a Kendrick Perkins Celtics-era highlight reel that is 1) wonderful just by dint of its existence, and 2) instructive about his role on the team. A power forward blows by Perkins, Kevin Garnett shows up to slow him down, and Perkins recovers in time to tip the eventual shot. Rajon Rondo dances into the lane, draws a crowd, and shuttles a pass to Perkins for a glacial dunk. Perkins grabs a rebound with gusto, turns, and sees that the opposing team had made no attempt to crash the boards.

He was more a totem than anything, then, a rotation spot the Celtics committed to the idea of what they would like to be. Tough, mean, taking no shit. Center-as-mascot. Everything Perkins looked like he could do well, someone else did. Garnett patrolled the lane with sage ferocity; Tony Allen tumbled to the parquet for a loose ball.

This is not a criticism of Perkins but a celebration, both of him and of a time not terribly long ago that seemed more conducive to players like him. The general climate of basketball fandom was a little more inclined, then, to accept a team's report of essential camaraderie than to contradict it with plus/minus evidence. As Perkins' career went on, his skills eroded alongside public tolerance for a less-than-optimal, statistically suspect lineup. In Oklahoma City, Scott Brooks drew (deserved) ire for starting him next to Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook; Perkins combined with Brooks' uninspired sets to impede two of the league's foremost offensive dynamos at least as much as any defense could.

Presently, in Cleveland, Perkins sees meager and unimportant minutes. This is both the natural endpoint of his role in Boston, his toughness now entirely for show, and a testament to how far the game has come. A big man in the modern NBA must protect the rim, stretch the floor, or score with ease near the basket, preferably in some combination. Perkins, stone-handed and uranium-heeled, does none of this.

The real, practical rough stuff is left, these days, to more adaptable types or more accomplished specialists; this year's Finals contestants demonstrate this as well as anyone. Golden State's Draymond Green belongs to the first camp, running pick-and-pops with Stephen Curry and leading fastbreaks and passing from the post and switching onto centers. Cleveland's Tristan Thompson, offensive rebounding savant, represents the second. All around, though, are examples of how the game has left poor Perk behind. Timofey Mozgov, not exactly a dancer in the post, nevertheless pivots with a promptness Perkins never realized. Even Andrew Bogut, this series' most classical brute, combines his strong arms and heavy brow with a deft passing touch essential to the Warriors' florid offense.

After the Cavaliers finished their sweep of the Hawks in the Eastern Conference Finals last week, they took videos of themselves celebrating in the ice baths. LeBron James, J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert, and Kyrie Irving swayed together and passed bottles of champagne. Perkins, who had helped run out the clock when the victory was well in hand, stood in the background with ice wrapped around his knees and a hard look on face. Work's not done, he seemed to be suggesting solemnly, even though—barring disaster—he won't be doing any of it. "Perk, where you at," Shumpert called out. Perkins, at the back of the frame and with all deliberateness, raised his fists just as the camera panned away.