NBA PM: Perkins Still Hurt By Trade
Kendrick Perkins is now a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder, but a big part of his heart remains in Boston, where he helped the Celtics capture an NBA championship and spent seven and a half seasons of his career. He had a tremendous impact on the Thunder, who welcomed him with open arms, but he admits he is still a little bit hurt by the trade.
“Yeah I am,” Perkins said while playing in a charity game in Boston on Saturday night. “Hurt, surprised, I think it really still hasn’t hit me yet. I think everything happened so fast last year that it was like for me coming back from off my ACL injury to spraining my MCL to getting traded the next day and going to a young Oklahoma City team that I have to be a leader and stuff like that. So yeah, it still hurts that I did get traded, but then again at the same time the city of Oklahoma has been great to me too. They embraced me with open arms and I have no complaints about the city of Oklahoma and the whole organization from Kevin on down to Sam Presti to Troy Weaver, they all welcomed me with open arms. So yes, I do miss Boston, but Oklahoma is a great place.”
Returning to the city to take part in a charity game hosted by Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo really brought the trade home for Perkins and made him realize how much he misses the area.
“I never knew how much I missed being here til I got back in here, but I definitely miss the whole city of Boston, the whole area of New England, and it just felt good to be back playing basketball back in Boston. So it definitely was a good feeling and a whole lot of fun today.”
From the Boston crowd’s response to Perkins’ presence, you might think he had never been traded. Perkins even found himself tearing up as the fans cheered him on.
“It’s always overwhelming,” he admitted. “You try to catch yourself from dropping a tear or something like that, but like I always say, the city has been good to me since I came into the NBA as a young man at 18. So I never take it for granted and I definitely appreciate all the support when I come back to the New England area. You know I hated to leave, to go back to that part, but God does everything for a reason. But Boston and the whole New England area is still in my heart so it was just fun to be back.”
Like most NBA players, Perkins is using the extra time off to get healthy, but also looking for ways to stay in game shape.
“I’ve just been rehabbing a lot, trying to take a lot of pressure of my knees, and just go from there. So I’ve just been in the gym working hard. I thought the season was going to start, but it hasn’t yet, so I’m just going to continue to work and whenever the season starts just try to go from there. So I was just happy about playing basketball. Rajon called me about two weeks ago and told me he was planning a game. I told him I’d be the first to be there.”
The NBA players voted to de-certify their union last week, but it was not a vote of all the players. Instead, representatives were selected from each team and they voted for the group. Some agree with that as a means of moving forward, but many players also feel, as Perkins does, that it might be better to have all of the players get a chance to vote on future offers.
“Yeah, I think so because you’ve got a lot of guys that you know every guy feels different in my eyes. I feel like some guys may want to take the deal, some guys maybe say they don’t want to take the deal, and whatever it may be. But I think the biggest thing the players is that we’ve all got to stick together and be on one page because we know the owners are going to do the same. So I just think right now if everybody put their pride aside, I think we could get a deal done. I think both sides are being really prideful in my eyes. I think if both sides kind of dropped their pride and come in with an open mind and an open heart, I think we could get a deal done.”
It seems pride may be more of a dividing factor than the actual issues at this point, and Perkins admitted it’s hard to foresee whether to two sides can stop posturing and just talk to each other.
“That’s a question I can’t answer because I don’t know. I just know where my heart is and I’m just ready to play the game of basketball. You know, it’s not a financial situation or anything to that nature, but it’s just time to play basketball. It’s cold outside, it’s the month of November, and you know you’re used to getting the season cranked off. So you know I’m ready to play but at the same time, I’ve got to understand that business is business. It wasn’t no different than me getting traded than for us negotiating for what’s fair for both sides. So I’m just sitting back, patiently waiting, and just doing what I’ve got to do and not worrying about the rest that I can’t control.”
The fans of Boston may have welcomed Perkins back in grand style, but it’s nothing compared to the welcome he’ll receive in OKC when the Thunder are finally back on the court, looking to push their way to the NBA Finals . . .once the lockout finally ends.
NBA Affiliates Preparing For Losses
The NBA has already cancelled a month and a half of the 2011-12 season, and with more games likely to be lost, the affiliates who carry NBA games are eyeing payments for games lost, according to Multichannel.com.
Programmers and distributors said each contract has its own specific language and terms. But the loss of 20 contests — each club plays 82 — seems to be a trigger point for a number of the regional sports networks that present NBA games to rebate some of their license fees back to distributors.
The disbursement fallout evidently won’t come soon, though, or necessarily in cash.
The NBA is shut down through at least mid- December, but reimbursement can’t come until the dates of the original schedule actually pass, according to one programming executive.
Another said those tallies probably wouldn’t occur until an abbreviated campaign is scheduled or the entire 2011-12 season is officially blotted out.
“If it started early next year, the NBA could add an extra game a week and extend the season a couple of weeks in June,” the programming executive said, so it would make more sense to make those calculations after a schedule is finalized.
What form the compensation would take is another matter. “It’s difficult to make final calculations [about the value of games] and we’d probably have to set up a billing system, an expense in its own right,” an MSO executive said. “You might not see a rebate per se, but it could be made up in marketing or in the next round of negotiations.”
Things are just going to get messier for the NBA should more games wind up getting cancelled, and this is just one more example of why.
Aldridge: The Felton Effect
HOOPSWORLD caught up with Portland Trail Blazers forward LaMarcus Adridge recently to talk about the trade that reunited Raymond Felton and Gerald Wallace in Portland, the health of Greg Oden and Brandon Roy, the lockout, and more:
Chandler Dominates In Debut
The Chinese Basketball Association tipped off their regular season schedule over the weekend, and by far the brightest star of the league was former Denver Nuggets guard Wilson Chandler. Chandler was nothing short of dominant while turning in a Yao Ming-like performance. He scored 43 points, grabbed 22 rebounds and even dished four assists in leading the Guangsha Lions to a 115-113 win over the Tianjin Golden Lions.
Other former NBA players dropping significant numbers over the weekend were Gerald Green (18 points), Alan Anderson (18 points, 6 rebounds), Marcus Williams (32 points with 8 three-pointers made), Stephon Marbury (29 points, 6 assists), Cartier Martin (38 points), and Randolph Morris (19 points, 12 rebounds).
To check out the weekend’s results and highlights, link here!
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