"I’ve got plans on coming back better than I did before."

One more win. That’s all the Celtics needed to bring home a championship. But Kendrick Perkins couldn’t help them, instead forced to stand on the bench in an oversized suit. That goddamn ACL injury, he must have been thinking as the clock expired on the NBA season. It robbed us of a title.

“I probably won’t ever get over [missing that game],” Perk told Slam Magazine’s Tzvi Twersky in a must-read interview. But don’t think Perk is dwelling on that game and letting it consume him.

“Mentally I’m good, I’m just focusing on this season, and focusing on my rehab and getting back and getting back healthy. Other than that, I really haven’t been worrying about too much more other than just getting on the court and chasing this title.”

Perk has been rehabbing hard, every day, and plans to come back strong.

“It’s getting a whole lot better,” Perk detailed his injury progress. “I’m walking without crutches and a brace, so things are moving along. I’m not rushing anything, but things are moving at a great pace.” So great, he says, that “I’ve got plans on coming back better than I did before.”

Perk continued, “It’s not as bad as everybody thinks. It’s difficult, obviously, but it’s not as bad as people think. If you’re mentally strong, you can get through it.” And Perk is most definitely mentally strong, as we Celtic fans have learned over the years. That mental strength, and its physical counterpart, helps Perk defend Dwight Howard better than anyone else alive, and it also allows Perk to willingly accept a smaller role.

Perk, the smileless wonder, is the offensive lineman of the Boston Celtics. He does all the dirty work. He takes elbows to the face. He does battle with the league’s fiercest beasts. But Perk gets very little shine, very little publicity. He hardly ever touches the ball. He has never made an All-Star team, never made an All-Defensive team. He simply does his job, helps his team win any way he knows how. And he doesn’t mind one bit that he doesn’t get more credit or touches.

“That’s not how our chemistry is,” Perk revealed. “There’s only one goal; so at times you want to get better as an individual, but then there’s times that you’ll be in situations you’ve never been in before. Like, there’s not too many times where you could be on a team that has a chance to win the title. So why not take advantage of it? I feel like stats are overrated, because stats—you could have an impact of the game and not have a huge number of stats. I feel like stats are overrated because—they just are.”

Stats are overrated because they just are, but Perk continues to be underrated. He just is. Yet nobody who follows the Celtics on a daily basis could understate his importance. He is the defensive anchor. He is the menacing presence. He is the enforcer, the monster, the beast. On a Celtics team that prides itself on defensive intensity and complete on-court selflessness, Perk fits perfectly. He has no agenda but winning.

And he wants another title. Badly. He just doesn’t care if he gets his revenge against LA.

“Man, it don’t even matter to me. I just want another shot at the ring, and to just go from there. It don’t matter if it’s the Lakers or whoever it may be.”

Oh yeah, one more thing. Perk admitted to smiling a lot when he’s not playing basketball. “Off the court,” he said, “I’m the coolest person.”

And on the court, ever-present scowl and all, he’ll always be cool by me.

(Note: Read the interview that provided me with all these quotes. Just do it. It has a ton of great stuff, including: 1) Perk would love to be a Celtic forever. 2) Perk says the Celtics have “a lot of guys with chips on their shoulder,” including himself — “I don’t have a choice but to have a chip on my shoulder.” 3) Kevin Garnett has taught Perk “too much. Seriously, man.”)

                          

Ron Artest was pulled over while driving this Eagle Roadster, reportedly because its registration date had expired. But it looks to me like this cop just wanted an autograph.

                          

Ladies and gentlemen, your new defensive coordinator.

My cousins and I are a bunch of odd ducks. We watch poker on ESPN and implement some of the sayings into our own vocabulary. For example, we were watching a special on the late, great (and also cracked out) Stu Ungar, and he was quoted as saying something like this: “As soon as the antes come out, I become a pitbull. And once I do, everyone should be afraid.” We started saying that phrase all the time. Any time somebody gets aggressive, whether it be in our own poker game, during a night of drinking, or hitting on a girl, we say “Well, I guess the antes are out.”

Almost every time the Celtics play defense, the antes are out. They kill themselves to rotate, sprint halfway across the court to contest shooters, and bust their asses to keep the opposing team from getting any type of easy look. It helped that Tom Thibodeau was a defensive Will Hunting, of course, but the Celtics stop their opponents because they are willing to execute the schemes, because they have the right mentality. Because, like Rocky against Ivan Drago, to beat the Celtics you are going to have to kill them. And to kill them, you must be willing to die yourself.

That’s why I love the changes Larry Drew is making in Atlanta. Last season, the Hawks took advantage of their athleticism and versatility by switching a lot of screens. This year, the Hawks will take advantage of their athleticism by fighting through those same screens. A small switch, to most observers, but one that will should change Atlanta’s entire defensive mentality.

On the surface, switching screens made sense for Atlanta. A lot of Hawks have similar body types and athleticism. Even their two big men, Josh Smith and Al Horford, possess the agility to defend guards on the perimeter. Switching screens, in the eyes of the immaculately facil hair’ed  Mike Woodson, was the right move. His team’s versatility guaranteed that mismatches would be few and far between, even with the switching. But Woodson overlooked one aspect of switching almost every screen; it’s taking the easy way out, and it sets a lackadaisical tone.

Instead of using the switched screens as an advantage, the Hawks used them as a way to catch some rest. As the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Michael Cunningham remarks, “You could see that happen with the Hawks last season. Players became so reliant on the switches that they tended to relax in anticipation of screens. Why fight through picks to stay with your man when he can be always be passed off to a teammate?” And that mentality doesn’t just stop at screens. When players relax on one aspect of defense, they stop being on their toes. They stop working their hardest. They lose their edge. It’s that edge that Drew is looking to re-instill when he forces his players to become accountable, to fight through the damn screen themselves.

What Drew is attempting to accomplish in Atlanta, Lawrence Frank is charged with maintaining in Boston. Filling Tom Thibodeau’s shoes is not what one would call “easy.” We all realize that. But as long as Frank devises a defense that will keep the Celtics’ intensity through the roof, as long as he puts the Celtics in positions where their own extra effort will allow them to force difficult shots, he will have done his job.

The antes will be out.

                          

In case you didn’t see Team USA play Angola, I’ll summarize the game for you in one word: massacre. I’m almost positive I could have gathered myself and four guys I went to high school with and given Angola a run for its money. And I went to a high school that has never even won a basketball state championship, and all my high school teammates who used to be legit now have beer guts. Team USA won 121-66, and I’m not even exaggerating when I say it should have been worse.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to work out. I’ve got to get in shape if four of my friends and I are going to kick some Angolan ass. On second thought, no I don’t. We could probably beat the Angolans after a month of nothing but Jager bombs and Taco Bell.

By the way, I apologize to any Angolan readers who were offended that I honestly believe I could beat their national team in a basketball game. But they should probably be a lot more offended by their own team.

                          

Cue the fans: “We should have kept Leon!” Which might be true…

But I’m pretty content with a frontcourt of Perk, Shaq, JO, KG and Big Baby.

                          

“Writer’s block” isn’t even in my vocabulary. I have no idea what it means. I simply “pound the keys, damn it,” just like William Forester advised Jamal. My writing might not be great, but I can always hammer out words with the best of them. 600 or 700 words in 45 minutes? No problem. I just keep Forester-ing those computer keys, all day long. Writer’s block? Pshh, what’s that?

Then I tried writing about Jermaine O’Neal.

A full week after I began writing this post, I finally realized the problem with writing about Jermaine, the reason the freaking words wouldn’t flow like they normally do: At this point in his career, O’Neal is damn average. He has solid post moves, but he’s no Kevin McHale. He’s a good defender, but nobody’s going to confuse him for Bill Russell. His midrange jumper is smooth, but not like Kevin Garnett’s. He’s athletic, but his aerial skills won’t blow your socks off. He’s a big name, but not like his bash brother Shaq. He’s a legit rebounder, but, again, he’s no Russell. There’s nothing spectacular about Jermaine O’Neal, nothing to get too excited about.

Until you realize he might be the missing piece to the Celtics’ 18th championship.

Don’t be confused by his performance (if you can call it that) in last year’s playoffs; Jermaine O’Neal can still play. He’s not an All-Star anymore, but he’s no chump either. He’s a well-rounded player who can affect a game on both ends. And best of all, he’s already come to terms with his basketball mortality.

Wait, you ask, Jermaine O’Neal coming to terms with his basketball mortality is a good thing? Doesn’t that mean he’s past his prime? Yep. But it also means he no longer holds illusions of single-handedly carrying his team to a ring. Of All-NBA teams. Of the Hall of Fame. O’Neal has already been humbled.

Like the Big Three before him, O’Neal is coming to Boston at the right stage of his career. No more ego, no more desire to post big stats. O’Neal just wants to fit in and do whatever Doc Rivers needs him to, so that the two can help co-host a parade in Boston at the end of the season.

O’Neal with the Celtics is a marriage based in need, an easy match. The Celtics needed size, and they got it. They needed rebounding, and they got it. They needed a stable of big men to stop Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum, and they needed that same stable of big men to take advantage of Miami’s front court weakness. Done and done.

And O’Neal? He needs the Celtics to help him win his first ring. 

Now all he needs to do is help them help him.

                          

I was reading Andrew Sharp’s piece about Kevin Durant’s media-driven throne of righteousness, and I completely disagreed with one of Sharp’s points. Oddly enough, considering it was a piece about Durant, the actual point I disagreed with had little to do with the spindly, 6’9″ scorer. Sharp wrote this: (SB Nation)

Jerry Seinfeld once said sports fans are basically “cheering laundry,” and in a literal sense, he’s right. But in a literal sense, sports are a complete and utter waste of time. That’s Seinfeld’s point. Only by taking things to the deeper level, adopting certain guys as heroes and others as villains… Only then does it become something worth going crazy over.

We create this dynamic—LeBron as villain, Durant as hero—because otherwise, they’re just two oversized gentleman that run up and down a wooden court 100 nights a year, wearing different laundry. Projecting character onto these guys may be naive, but it’s also what makes sports fun. And that’s the essential truth missed by both Craggs and all the writers lavishing Durant with praise.

If NBA players could all be more like Kevin Durant… Basketball would be incredibly boring.

I don’t know about all of you, but I don’t watch basketball, I don’t follow basketball, and I don’t love basketball because the players have character. I don’t care about the NBA because Lebron James is a villain and Kevin Durant is a hero. If that was why I cared about sports, I wouldn’t care about sports at all. I’d merely watch soap operas all day, preferably All My Children.

In fact, I hardly care about what NBA superstars are like off the floor. I don’t watch Lebron James play basketball because he’s a villain, or because he used to be seen as “the unselfish superstar,” just as I don’t watch Kevin Durant play basketball because he seems like a fun guy to play Madden against.  I watch Lebron because he is the biggest, strongest, fastest package of athleticism ever created by the hand of God, and I watch Durant because I’ve never seen someone his height with that mind-blowing package of skills. Watching them, regardless of how the media portrays them or how I feel about them as individuals, not only brings me awe that a human being could be THAT good at basketball, but that he could push the limits of human accomplishments so far.

Greatness, no matter who does it or what avenue of life it appears in, is special. It’s why I watched the Olympics and became attached to Michael Phelps. I didn’t know the first thing about Phelps and I didn’t know the first thing about executing a proper flip turn, but I understood that what he was doing was extremely special, and that was good enough for me. I returned to my television every time Phelps had a race, because I knew there was always the potential for greatness. I didn’t care whether Phelps was a bank robber or Mother Theresa; he was doing something better than it had ever been done before, and that was enough for me.

But watching basketball is different than watching the Olympics, different than watching Phelps. Not only do I watch for the potential greatness each game brings, but I watch because I appreciate the intricacies of the game. I watch because a simple bounce pass can leave me breathless. I watch for the sound of a swish, the thwap of a dribble, and because the squeaking of sneakers sounds like heaven. I watch for the perfectly executed screen-and-roll, the beautiful no-look pass, and because “damn, did you just see that guy fly?” I watch because you never know when you’ll see a close game, a great comeback, or an astounding play. I watch because I don’t ever want to miss something special, and I watch because I see greatness even in the smallest, most normal plays.

So no, Andrew Sharp, I don’t watch basketball because Lebron James is a villain and Kevin Durant is a hero. In fact, if they were “just two oversized gentleman that run up and down a wooden court 100 nights-a-year, wearing different laundry” that’d be A-okay with me. As long as they still played the game I love and played it better than just about anyone else on earth. As long as they still showed me what greatness looks like, as long as they still tested the boundaries of human accomplishment.

Even my unabashed love for certain players has no basis in personality. Paul Pierce isn’t my favorite player because he’s a great guy, or because he’s known as The Truth, or because he smiles from time to time in postgame press conferences; he’s my favorite player because he’s been a Celtic the longest, because his on-court skills have helped my favorite team win games for years. The same thing goes for my favorite non-Celtic, Steve Nash. I don’t give a damn that Nash makes funny videos or seems really down to earth, or that some people view him as the underdog because he’s small and white. Those things are all cool by me, but I try to watch Nash as often as I can because he makes at least three or four passes per game that make me wish I was a soccer-loving Canadian originally from South Africa.

I watch sports in general for the potential of seeing something prodigious,  but I watch basketball more often than I watch any other sport because I appreciate every intricate detail roundball has to offer. I certainly “root for laundry” when I cheer on the Celtics, but I’ve got a confession: even if Lebron, Durant and every other player in the NBA were nothing more than bland, boring, over-sized gentlemen who run up and down a wooden court 100 nights a year, I’d still love this game.

What can I say? I’m an addict.

                          

Problems. Delonte West has some, no doubt. The man has issues, deep, dark ones that have haunted him at times in the past.

Problems. The Celtics have some, but fewer today than they had at the beginning of yesterday. And that’s because they signed Delonte West.

West has many problems, but for the Celtics he is also a solution. They needed another reliable wing, and they got one. They needed a defensive-minded perimeter player, and they got him. They needed a shooter, and they got that too. The only question that remains is whether West’s demons, always bubbling under the surface, threatening to cause harm to himself and his team, reveal themselves once again. When I put it that way, West has the potential to be one hell of a problem.

But is he definitely a locker room cancer? No. He might even be part of the cure. Sure, West has screwed up. Screwed up royally, in fact. Stashing guns in a guitar case and slinging said guitar case over one’s shoulder is nothing short of sinister. I know that. I just can’t get by the fact that West always seems beloved by his teammates, always seems to be “one of the guys.” He has problems, yeah, but Delonte West has always been a team player.

I said this in an earlier post, but it bears repeating. West was always in the center of all those silly photographs the Cavs would take. He is always goofing around, always having fun with his teammates. He has some psychological issues, but on the court is where West relaxes and becomes himself, where — for 48 minutes, at least — West gets away from all those headaches and simply plays basketball. On the court, West is as low-maintenance an NBA player as you’ll find. He checks into the game, works his ass off, makes some plays, and never once complains.

That’s why Danny Ainge said, “I’m a fan of Delonte.” If you watch West play, you can’t help but be impressed. Not that he deserves to be an All-Star (he doesn’t), but West plays basketball the right way. He hustles, makes the extra pass, and remains the aggressor on both sides of the court. With his tenacity and unselfishness, West is the type of player that helps a ball-club win games. He’s the type of player that, if you’re a coach, you can’t help but appreciate. That is, as long as he isn’t in a mental illness-related tailspin.

With West, the discussion will always come back to that. “Yes, he’s a rugged defender and intelligent offensive performer, but don’t you remember all those guns?” “Sure, he’s a playoff-tested tough guy who can make plays off the bench, but…” “I know, he can shoot, handle the ball and defend like an animal, but…”

But, but, but. Delonte West will always come with a warning. He’s always going to be considered a potential problem.

The Celtics just have to hope he’s more of a solution.

                          

Say cheese on three, Perk.

Paul Pierce wanted to go away for training camp, far, far away. He felt a training camp vacation would benefit his Celtics, who could use a bonding experience to gain some chemistry.

“When you got new guys and these types of personalities, I think it’s good for all of us to get out, be at a dinner table — me, Shaq, Kevin [Garnett], Ray [Allen], Jermaine,” he told the Boston Globe. “I think it would be good for that relationship, building that chemistry. We get away and go somewhere, that’s something we’ll definitely do.”

Pierce continued, “I’m really getting tired of Newport. I want to go somewhere else.”

Somewhere else… as in Waltham, where the Celtics normally hold practices? I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what Pierce had in mind when he said he wanted to get away. I’m also pretty sure that Waltham, where most of the players have houses and some have families, isn’t the best place to forge chemistry. And the Celtics, who signed an astonishing 11 players this offseason, need to build a bond.

“Chemistry is a delicate thing. I understand that, and I’m as cautious as anyone with it. I guarantee you, I’ll be keeping my eye on it,” Doc Rivers told NBA Fanhouse. “I don’t know yet if we can make it work. It is going to be interesting, that’s for sure.”

Interesting, indeed. With Shaq, Delonte West and Von Wafer among the C’s offseason additions, the locker room should have its own reality show. Seriously. I’d watch that 24/7.

But I’m not sure chemistry should be so trying. Shaq’s ego could be problematic, but West knows his role and he plays it well. Personal issues aside, West has already proven himself to do whatever his coach asks of him. He’s also, all unfounded rumors aside, a player who gets along with his teammates. The last few years, you could find Delonte cheesing for the fake photographs Lebron James snapped before games or joking around with teammates on the bench. Before that, he was a fan favorite in Boston, beloved for his endless energy and spunk. His depression is worrisome, to say the least, but when mentally healthy, Delonte has always been a player coaches and teammates enjoy. He was never a problem in Cleveland, where the Cavaliers had unrivaled chemistry as they joked and danced their way to 60+ wins each of the last two seasons.

Wafer has been a problem in the past, but he isn’t in any position to be one this year. He’s down to his last chance, and he must know it. If Wafer can’t get along with Doc Rivers, a player’s coach if there ever was one, then he’s probably won’t ever find his way back to the NBA. With that in mind, I’m sure Wafer will be on his best behavior. Either that or he’s an even bigger headcase than anyone could imagine.

Besides Wafer, the one big spot where I see a potential chemistry meltdown is when Kendrick Perkins returns in February. Then, three guys who have always been starters need to split the minutes of two men. Seriously, what happens when Perk gets back? Does Shaq get the first DNP-CD of his career? Does Jermaine O’Neal? Does Perk? There won’t be many minutes to split between the three centers, and somebody’s bound to be the odd man out. How will everyone handle it? I have no idea, but I could see it becoming a problem.

Other than that, chemistry may not be as volatile as some might think. As Rivers noted, “If your goal is anything other than winning a championship, you’re going to have a problem with chemistry.” But with a team that prides itself on possessing the ultimate winner’s mentality and additions that, for the most part, want to do nothing but win, maybe chemistry shouldn’t be such a worry.

Rivers said, “I think we’re getting [the new additions] at the right time. They’re not coming to be stars. They are coming to be role players trying to help us win a championship.”

As long as that sentiment remains true, the Celtics will be a force to be reckoned with. Even if they went against Pierce’s wishes and will hold training camp in their own backyard.

                          

Dominique Wilkins has a special place in Celtics history. Not only did he make a brief Celtics cameo in 1994-’95, but he also was half of the famous Bird-’Nique duel. The one where the two stars basically played one-on-one to decide who would win Game 7 of the 1988 Eastern Conference Semifinals.

But none of that is the reason I chose this highlight reel. I simply chose it because ‘Nique treated every rim he saw like it was his worst enemy.

(h/t Dime)