What I find fascinating is the way Perkins, Baby and Rondo have been demonized by Celtic fans. Now it's conventional wisdom that Perk is a scrub, that Baby is the reason we didn't win a championship and that Rondo should be traded. It's all so crazy. Perkins is a strong defensive center who helped the Thunder drive deep into the playoffs even at 60%. Davis has been our best guy off the bench. Rondo is as talented a player as there is in the league. It's all scapegoating.
So, do we need another Perk now? Of course not. It's a silly question, really. Perkins, with his strengths and his faults, is sui generis. Ideally, we'd love to have a strong defensive anchor at center, who rebounds brilliantly and also is a killer around the hoop on offense. We need Dwight Howard. But if we can't get Howard - and I suppose, all in all, we have as good a chance as anyone, but there are several teams that presumably have at least as good a chance as we do - we'll probably be lucky if we can just find a pretty good starting center. Given the choice, we should still prefer defense over offense. Someone comments that Shaq was a defensively weak center, as if that proves that we should prefer offense over defense. Of course, that's not the case. Even at the end of his career Shaq, like Perkins, provided a strong defensive anchor. Simply put, both those guys patrol the paint like they mean it. With a defense like the Celtics', where the other four player are very active, that can be very effective.
But what I find most strange is the comment that intangibles don't matter, that only skills matter, and that intangibles are something cited by agents trying to negotiate inflated contracts for scrubs. I think that if you ask Chicago and Miami, you'll quickly find out that when Perk was traded, both teams felt that the way had been cleared for them. As Artis Gilmore said, basketball is an emotional game. Skills are important, but motivation is more important.