Since his playing days ended, Kendrick Perkins has gone further and further down the hot-take rabbit hole and has drifted away from anything resembling coherent basketball analysis. This was again on display recently on ESPN’s NBA Today on Monday, when he called out the Nuggets, saying they can’t continue to waste Nikola Jokic’s greatness.
Unfortunately for Big Perk and ESPN, he clearly didn’t do his research and got quite a few things wrong on the topic.
Big Perk needs to get his facts straight
I’m certainly not one to go to bat for the Kroenkes, but Perk was acting like the Nuggets need to “hit the market”. He should probably acknowledge that, as it stands, Denver has the highest payroll in the entire league, and they’re the only team above the second apron. You can say a lot of things about this ownership group and some of the moves they’ve made, but saying they haven’t done right by Jokic or hit the market when they’re spending more than anyone else is absurd.
Furthermore, Perk said he believes that the Jokic-Jamal Murray duo has “run its course” and claimed that while Murray had an All-Star season last year, he’s going to need to up it to an All-NBA caliber performance.
Keep in mind, Perkins is one of the voters for All-NBA teams, so you’d think he would have a decent handle on these things. But clearly that’s not the case, or Perk would know that Murray did, in fact, make an All-NBA team just last season.
I also find it funny that Perkins claims that Christian Braun and Cam Johnson, the Nuggets’ fourth and fifth starters, need to be “elite two-way players”. I’m sorry, WHAT? What teams in the modern NBA have fourth and fifth options who are elite two-way players? These guys are very good role players. They’ve never been elite two-way players, and they’re never going to be. And that’s okay. What a ridiculous comment and expectation from Perkins.
Zero consistency to Perkins' arguments
Finally, just to highlight the inconsistency from Perk and prove that he’s just saying things to get a reaction, his former team, the Celtics, did exactly what he’s suggesting. They decided their championship-winning duo of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown had run its course, and they dealt Brown to shake things up.
And yet, Perkins has spent the entire offseason criticizing the Celtics for the move and claiming that he doesn’t even think Boston will be a top-six team in the Eastern Conference now. In other words, he has no clue.
I’m not saying the Nuggets are perfect. They’ve made a lot of mistakes, and they’re clearly looking up at the Spurs and Thunder in the West. But to act like they’re not even trying, that the stars have gotten stale, and the team is wasting Jokic, is just insulting and flat-out wrong. I’d ask Big Perk to be better, but based on his history, there’s no reason for anyone to hold their breath.
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