Is Kurly not starting? Celtics vulnerability is their interior D. Celtics bigs are softer than baby puppies in their current state. It was Perk not KG the reason Celtics had a stalwart interior D. KG did the talking & Perk did the walking.
Perk was not the reason our defense was good this year, so lets leave that notion at that.
That's what they always say, Perk wasn't the reason for anything. Game 7 proved otherwise & Celtics current run says otherwise. Teams are smothering the Celtics on the inside. Celtics are soft.
So when the Celtics didn't play soft for most of the year with Perk on the sideline, Perk was still providing a tough interior defensive presence because his aura emanated from the bench out onto the court and underneath the basket?
Or maybe he transferred his essence into Semih Erden during that stretch and it was Semih Erden, who started for a good portion of the season and saw heavy minutes with Jermaine and / or Shaq out, that was maintaining our strong interior D?
Are we really gonna argue that our interior D is that much worse because we're missing a center who only played for about a month and a slim rookie 7 footer who barely knew the rotations? Our defense was very good for most of the season without Perk and with Semih as a key rotation player. While I don't think Nenad is good at defense, I sincerely doubt that he's much worse than Semih Erden. I also think it's really tough to argue that Perk had an appreciable impact on the team's defense for most of the season.