right, so this is why Roy has no faith that anybody will acknowledge at the end of the season that the trade was bad. People who like the trade will continue to find some stat that tells them the trade was good or not the problem.
This isn't just "some stat."
Perkins was never a "do it all" center. We've always liked him and valued him for 2 things: defense and rebounding. If there is no significant drop off in defense and rebounding after he was gone, it is only natural to assume that we are not significantly worse without him in those two areas.
The reason for the recent slump is as clear as day: 4th quarter scoring. So if a team goes in a slump where it allows the same amount of points as before, but scores less, and scores less specifically in the 4th quarter, I think it is safe to say that the cause for that is not the loss of a defensive player that played the least amount of minutes in the 4th quarter.
I have no invested interest in this trade being good or bad. I have an interest in empirical reality. If the celtics lose out because they have bad interior defense and rebounding, I have no problems acknowledging the trade was a culprit. But that so far has not been the case. The case right now is that the celtics have gone from a net positive 4th quarter scoring margin to a deeply negative one (-5 over the slump). Which means that the culprit is clearly age, not the absence of a player who didn't score much, specially in the 4th quarter.