The story of the two best friends was incomplete when Kendrick Perkins was traded away to the Oklahoma City Thunder.  While the change of teams may have physically separated them, the common injury (a torn ACL) brings them back together.  They continue to talk everyday and Perk is planning on heading to Kentucky to spend some quality time with Rondo over all-star weekend (via Gary Washburn at the Boston Globe):

“When you hear stuff like that, especially with a close friend, it’s always disturbing,” said Perkins. “So I just wanted to call and make sure that he was all right as far as mentally and just getting ready. Because it takes a focus to go through that process of surgery and the recovery of it.

“So I just wanted to give him some advice on his health and second opinions and how to go about his rehab and just let him know that I’m here for him.”…

“Mentally, he has a hard time with just sitting out and probably not being able to walk for a minute and not being able to run,” Perkins said. “And just the whole rehab part of it. Mentally, he struggles with things like that.

“That’s the biggest thing he was concerned about. I don’t think he never really had that type of surgery where it affected him and [forced] him to have to go to rehab to get back to where he needed to be.”

Perkins’ quotes from this story show once again that there is more to Perk than a scowl and a sweet follow-through.  He is built from the same loyalty cloth as Kevin Garnett, and the concern he shows for one of his closest friends transcends the game of basketball.

Stories like this personalize a game that can otherwise easily be written off as people with different color jerseys competing in menial tasks (I hope I did not ruin the game of basketball for anyone), but these tales prove the games importance.  They give the game a pulse.  It is about the shared battles and victories (the 2008 championship) that typify those bonds, and it is comforting to see such connection through otherwise superficial means.

But I digress.  This, at the very least, reminds us how awesome Perkins is.