Perk played GREAT tonight

[BballTim]

I hope, however, we are all seeing that the injury question on Perk should not have been a reason to make the trade.

  Why? There were no injury concerns with Perk? There was no guarantee that he'd be back by now and there's no guarantee that he'd have remained healthy through a long playoff run.

but the plan to replace him that we are now dependent on was much more dicey...

  You pick and choose what's dicey or not. And even then saying that something's "more dicey" doesn't mean that there were no injury concerns with Perk.

[get_banners]

perk is going to look good in OKC so long as he doesn't get hurt. given their offense (the ball is almost always with westbrook or durant), perk being a liability on offense won't hurt him much. here, it did because we move the ball around (well, not so much during our funk, but still...). also...yeah, our woes are on offense right now, not defense. so, perk wouldn't help us much there.

[dtrader]

Perk had a good game, but he didn't play GREAT. Maybe great for him, but 6 points+10 boards in 31 mins isn't "great"...especially when it comes with 3 turnovers and the other teams players at that position reaching or exceeding their averages.

Nenad had 11pts and 6 rebs (with no TOs) in 25 mins, and it was a "horrible" game.  Numbers definitely don't tell the whole story, but either way the reactions to each are a bit unreasonable.

[aferris77]

perk is going to look good in OKC so long as he doesn't get hurt. given their offense (the ball is almost always with westbrook or durant), perk being a liability on offense won't hurt him much. here, it did because we move the ball around (well, not so much during our funk, but still...). also...yeah, our woes are on offense right now, not defense. so, perk wouldn't help us much there.

One problem we had last night was, indeed, defense. We couldn't grab a board to save our lives and we got zero blocks. JO may or may not help if his corpse makes it back to the court, but Shaq will not block. Krstic doesn't block anything. Perk's presence is sorely missed down low, hands or no hands.

What IS nice is now we have more spread on the floor and someone who can catch the ball, but our defense is hurt largely due to Perk missing.

[MBz]

I've always loved Perk, but I am so tired of hearing about how we are in major trouble with out him.  Since the trade deadline, the team has given up on average 88.9 points per game.  Our issue now is that we cannot score.  The T-wolves are the worst defensive team in the league, giving up about 106 pts per game and we only score 85? That should be the major concern right now.  Our interior defense hasn't been great, but its not completely terrible either.  We're giving up 89 pts a game with Krstic, he may not be a great defender, but clearly the system is still working.  We need to figure out ways to score.

[MBz]

perk is going to look good in OKC so long as he doesn't get hurt. given their offense (the ball is almost always with westbrook or durant), perk being a liability on offense won't hurt him much. here, it did because we move the ball around (well, not so much during our funk, but still...). also...yeah, our woes are on offense right now, not defense. so, perk wouldn't help us much there.

One problem we had last night was, indeed, defense. We couldn't grab a board to save our lives and we got zero blocks. JO may or may not help if his corpse makes it back to the court, but Shaq will not block. Krstic doesn't block anything. Perk's presence is sorely missed down low, hands or no hands.

What IS nice is now we have more spread on the floor and someone who can catch the ball, but our defense is hurt largely due to Perk missing.

We gave up 82 pts and held them to 37.5% FG shooting.  I understand we got out-rebounded, but defense wasn't the major issue.  Only scoring 85 pts against the worst defense in the league while shooting 40% was the issue.

[StartOrien]

Last night was the first game of his I saw, and I actually thought he looked a tad slower.

[LilRip]

i wonder what it would've been like if we had gotten Green-Krstic for Baby-Nate...

we'd have Perk starting, no mopey Rondo and Green getting a lot of minutes as a backup 3/4.

[European NBA fan]

i wonder what it would've been like if we had gotten Green-Krstic for Baby-Nate...

we'd have Perk starting, no mopey Rondo and Green getting a lot of minutes as a backup 3/4.

The only reason this trade happened, was that the Thunder had been persuing Perk before. There is no way we could have traded for Green without giving up Perk.

[StartOrien]

i wonder what it would've been like if we had gotten Green-Krstic for Baby-Nate...

we'd have Perk starting, no mopey Rondo and Green getting a lot of minutes as a backup 3/4.

I wonder that based off of what the team has, if Ainge valued Big Baby more than Perk.

[GreenFaith1819]

I've always loved Perk, but I am so tired of hearing about how we are in major trouble with out him.  Since the trade deadline, the team has given up on average 88.9 points per game.  Our issue now is that we cannot score.  The T-wolves are the worst defensive team in the league, giving up about 106 pts per game and we only score 85? That should be the major concern right now.  Our interior defense hasn't been great, but its not completely terrible either.  We're giving up 89 pts a game with Krstic, he may not be a great defender, but clearly the system is still working.  We need to figure out ways to score.

^^^Agreed^^^

[RJ87]

I hope, however, we are all seeing that the injury question on Perk should not have been a reason to make the trade.

  Why? There were no injury concerns with Perk? There was no guarantee that he'd be back by now and there's no guarantee that he'd have remained healthy through a long playoff run.

but the plan to replace him that we are now dependent on was much more dicey...

  You pick and choose what's dicey or not. And even then saying that something's "more dicey" doesn't mean that there were no injury concerns with Perk.

In winsomme's defense, he never said there was "no" injury risk with Perk, rather his point seems to be that the risk may have been overexagerrated by some to give the trade more validation. I agree with this assessment - I don't understand why people say that the Perk trade is fine because he was injured and we have Shaq, when in reality - Shaq is 39 years old and battling an assortment of fickle injuries.

[RJ87]

i wonder what it would've been like if we had gotten Green-Krstic for Baby-Nate...

we'd have Perk starting, no mopey Rondo and Green getting a lot of minutes as a backup 3/4.

I wonder that based off of what the team has, if Ainge valued Big Baby more than Perk.

OKC would not have done that trade, so it's a moot point. They wanted Perk - he was their prize.

[PosImpos]

I've always loved Perk, but I am so tired of hearing about how we are in major trouble with out him.  Since the trade deadline, the team has given up on average 88.9 points per game.  Our issue now is that we cannot score.  The T-wolves are the worst defensive team in the league, giving up about 106 pts per game and we only score 85? That should be the major concern right now.  Our interior defense hasn't been great, but its not completely terrible either.  We're giving up 89 pts a game with Krstic, he may not be a great defender, but clearly the system is still working.  We need to figure out ways to score.

Bingo.

[BballTim]

I hope, however, we are all seeing that the injury question on Perk should not have been a reason to make the trade.

  Why? There were no injury concerns with Perk? There was no guarantee that he'd be back by now and there's no guarantee that he'd have remained healthy through a long playoff run.

but the plan to replace him that we are now dependent on was much more dicey...

  You pick and choose what's dicey or not. And even then saying that something's "more dicey" doesn't mean that there were no injury concerns with Perk.

In winsomme's defense, he never said there was "no" injury risk with Perk, rather his point seems to be that the risk may have been overexagerrated by some to give the trade more validation. I agree with this assessment - I don't understand why people say that the Perk trade is fine because he was injured and we have Shaq, when in reality - Shaq is 39 years old and battling an assortment of fickle injuries.

  He seems to be saying that the fact that Perk's playing now means that concerns about his health right after his setback weren't legitimate.