How Kendrick Perkins earned Paul Pierce’s respect as Celtics rookie
Kendrick Perkins has taken a lot of criticism since transitioning away from the basketball court to his new career in sports media. However, during his playing days, Perkins served as a pivotal role player on the Boston Celtics, the team that drafted him in 2003 and with which he spent the first eight years of his career. And during his rookie season, a young Perk caught the attention of Paul Pierce, the Celtics’ star player.
While on a podcast co-hosted by the Knuckleheads’ Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles and Perkins’ former Celtics teammate Kevin Garnett, Perkins told a story of Pierce testing him and a few other Celtics rookies in the early 2000s.
“So he (Pierce) just comes in on one. He’s like, ‘I need to see who wants to be here.’ So we’re like, ‘S—t it’s all good, what’s up?'” Perkins said. “So it’s like, the snow up to here [points at a few feet of snow] outside. He throws $1,500 on the ground. ‘I got $1,500 right now, anyone of you mother f—-rs, you, you, you, one of you three mother f—-rs, go outside right now in your tights and give me 100 push-ups in the snow.’ You know, Marcus (Banks) like, s–t I went lottery, I don’t need the $1,500. B-Hunt (Brandon Hunter) went second round; he ain’t really feeling that s—t. I’m like s—t, I’ll do it. I’ll do it. So I go outside in the show in my tights and I got 100. He gave me the $1,500, I walk in, and he’s like ‘That’s what the f—k I’m talking about. He wants to be here.’
“Ever since then it was like, ‘Young fella, come to the crib, we’re playing dominoes,’ ‘Young fella, let’s go here.’ Ever since then, if P was going in the gym late night, he’d hit me up. Ever since then, it was like P my dawg.”
Kendrick Perkins drawing criticism from Celtics players and fans
Despite playing for the Celtics for eight years from 2003 to 2011, Kendrick Perkins has drawn the ire of Boston fans and seemingly even players. After the Celtics won the 2024 NBA Championship, the franchise’s first since the 2008 team Perkins was a part of, many former players were invited to and ultimately attended the team’s duck boat parade to celebrate the championship victory. Perkins was not one of those people, though.
Brian Scalabrine, Perkins’ former teammate who is now a television broadcaster for NBC Sports Boston, claimed Perkins was not invited and said that the former Celtics big man has a “big scarlet letter” on him.
“It’s not really an open-arms thing with Kendrick Perkins,” Scalabrine said on his SiriusXM show.
Although Perkins said that he was not aware former players were invited and that he probably would have declined even if he had been invited, he called Scalabrine a “coward” in light of his comments.
Over the past few years, since becoming a regular fixture on ESPN and its NBA broadcasts, Perkins has received criticism for a number of different comments he has made. As it relates to the Celtics, Perkins said during the Eastern Conference Finals that he was “so over” Jayson Tatum and waiting for him to “arrive” as a superstar in the postseason. In 2022, following the Celtics’ NBA Finals loss to the Golden State Warriors, Perkins said the team should have traded Brown, who won the ECF and Finals MVP this year.
Most personally, though, Perkins insinuated in January this year that Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla had a “bird brain.”
“They have two Joe Mazzullas,” Perkins said on ESPN’s ‘NBA Countdown’ show following a Celtics loss to the Denver Nuggets. “They have the one that got the philosophy of we’re going to get up more 3s than you. When they hit them, he looks great. Then you have the other Joe Mazzulla, who just stands over there, and you wonder — if you take his brain out and you put it in a bird, the bird is going to start flying backwards. You got that Joe Mazzulla.”
Perkins later said that he was “prepping” Mazzulla for the backlash he would receive from the fanbase and media in the playoffs, although he did admit he “kind of felt in [his] feelings” because he wasn’t invited to be around the team like some other former Celtics players had.
The post How Kendrick Perkins earned Paul Pierce’s respect as Celtics rookie appeared first on ClutchPoints.
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