It's just amazing to read this stuff. You guys are constructing a world where Danny Ainge can never be wrong, no matter how bizarre his antics are. There's no question that the Celtics imploded after The Trade, while the Thunder did a lot better. But many of you would rather believe that we 'never had a chance' against the wondrous Heat, even though for much of this last season WE looked like the team to beat for the championship.
If you wanted to blame someone on the Thunder for their difficulties containing the front duos of the Grizzlies and the Mavericks, it would make a lot more sense to blame Ibaka. It's Ibaka who has been unable to play effective defense on two of the most powerful and effective power forwards in the league. But then again, no one can play defense against those guys when the referees won't LET anyone.
I thought that there was going to be accountability for Danny if we didn't win a championship, after The Trade, at least from the fans. But many of you have simply moved the goal posts. You are now acting like it was never really realistic to think that we could win a championship.
Too old. Not athletic. Wow. Did all that happen overnight? Well, yes, it basically did.
Trading off Perkins hurt us on a lot of levels. Even at half speed, Perkins anchors a defense. As Doc FINALLY pointed out, it left us with a team that had basically been preset to preseason, as far as knowing each other was concerned. What he chose not to point out was that it clearly torpedoed our famous 'ubuntu'. And it killed our seeding.
No, Perkins isn't a great center. And now he's a hurting not-great-center. But he DOES control the middle on defense, and he does set screens on offense, and a lot of centers DON'T EVEN DO THAT MUCH.
And if you want to blame Perkins for Nowitski's breakout, never mind that N has been torching everyone, why not blame Chandler for Durant's 40 points? When people want soooo badly to defend Danny, they have to clutch at straws. Perkins elevated the Thunder. Losing him wrecked us. Not because he's a great player, but because he was necessary to us.
People continue to say 'if Shaq had been healthy'. Sure. A healthy Shaq was clearly better than Perkins. He made our offense literally unstoppable. When he was healthy, we were pretty much guaranteed a healthy lead in the first quarter against anyone. But he wasn't healthy. He was nowhere near it towards the end, and anyone who believed Danny's hype otherwise was being willfully delusional. Trading Perkins left us with no starting center. JO rose to the occasion. That alone was a miracle. Having him coming off the bench after Perk and playing like that would have been brilliant.
But what is stunning is the way everyone has gone fatalistic. Rather than blame the obvious cause for our demise from championship frontrunners to championship onlookers, many of you choose to search desperately for other reasons. As far as I can see, most people have been so deeply conditioned to worship authority that this is now second nature to them. They will not question even the most obvious lies, from authority figures that are well known to lie freely (as when Danny and Doc assured us endlessly that KG was on the point of return, two years ago).
So it is with life in bizarro world. I doubt if the Thunder will get past the Mavs. Nowitski scoring at a 50ppg clip is just too high a mountain to climb, probably for any team other than the Heat. But even if they do, some folks have already said that Perkins will deserve no part in the credit for such an achievement!!
I do have to say, if you're gonna talk about Shaq not being healthy, please realize Perk was injured AGAIN when he was traded. I believe it was said he'd be out for like a few days to a week before the trade. Then after, that somehow changed to 2-3 weeks. Same for Nate; he was gonna be back in a few before the trade, then after it was reported he'd be out 4-6 weeks or something.
If you wanna say the trade didn't help us, I agree completely. That said, I don't know if that means we vilify Danny considering the circumstances.
It's not like we traded away a healthy Perkins that was playing all season and looked like he'd be good to go for the rest of it.
I mean, think about it; we traded 5 guys I believe, and Harangody was the only one that could've been considered healthy. And that still left us with an injured Shaq, JO (at the time) and Wafer. My goodness. It sucks Arroyo, Murphy, nor Pavlovic really panned out the way we wished they would, but who else do we get? Powe, who didn't even play much for the Grizz in the playoffs?
And then, come the end of the regular season, BBD gets hurt, KRSTIC gets hurt, and then Rondo got hurt in the playoffs. It could be argued none of them were 100% healthy again after they came back from injury.
Assuming no trade was made, where does that leave us? A gimpy Perk? Pavlovic trying to guard Lebron or Melo?
The trade didn't help us, but in a perfect world, other factors would have helped us overcome it, and in reality, other factors hurt the team either just as much or much more.
