Simple reason. A non-healthy Shaq. If he was able to play all season we'd be at least headed to the finals. Perk and JO were good enough to make us competitive this year, but Shaq was the difference maker.
Roy already showed the numbers. Perk in the lineup was producing the same offensive results the team was producing last year.
The trade killed the offense. It was no longer like clockwork. It had to be trimmed.
Two things. We lost last year. There was no Miami Heat level team to go through. Our offense isn't worse because of no Perk, it is worse because Rondo didnt play at the level he did last season. Hmmm. We can blame the reduction in offense with a guy who isn't offensive and barely touched the ball, or on our PG who used to get to the rim but this playoffs was unable to do it. Taht didn't have an affect on our offensive woes much more likely than no Perk?!
People are prone to separate offense and defense when making their analysis of this or that player, but basketball is one of those sports where offense/defense are inextricably linked, making cause-and-effect rationalizing that much more difficult.
Bad offensive spacing leads to fast break opportunities for the other team, while smart shot selection and good spacing limits transition for the opposing teams. Poor rebounding leads to 2nd chance points, but good rebounding leads to easy fast break buckets the other way. Good consistent interior defense leads to more stops, which leads to more fastbreak opportunities, which should lead to more easy buckets. On the other hand, it's pretty hard to score consistently when you are always taking the ball out of the basket and facing the other team's defense after it's already set up.
Keeping all the above in mind, Perk's departure had a major effect on the offense. First, we have all the little things that Perk did, things like knowing the playbook inside and out, setting bone-crushing screens, knowing when and where to move to find the perfect angle for the dump down pass for a dunk, and just having great chemistry with his teammates. As Doc pointed out:
Well it was more not that the trust went away, the know-how went away, the continuity went away," said Rivers. "That's what the trade affected more than anything. Obviously [Kendrick Perkins] was great to our team and all of that, but it was more that you had new guys playing different positions and you had a floor guy, who could literally reach back into a playbook and throw out something that was three or four years old and they all knew it, when Perk was there. When you lose Perk, you take that one guy out of that starting lineup. Now there's the fifth guy who doesn't know your offense three years ago. He only knows what he knows since he's been there, and that limited our group. With Rondo, because the way teams guard him, you need a massive playbook and that took more away from it than we thought.
But those are the obvious places where Perk was missed. The less obvious place he was missed was defensively, and how that affected the Cs offense. While JO was able to replicate some of what Perk brought on defense, things like weakside shotblocking, low post defense, and blitzing the pick-and-roll properly, he was deficient in other things, like defensive rebounding and the knack of making a timely outlet pass, things that led to fast break opportunities and easy buckets. Part of the problem the Cs had in getting out in transition in the playoffs was the simple fact that the outlet pass wasn't getting to Rondo in a timely manner.
