DOC ON PERK

BOSTON HERALD

Nenad’s no Perk

Kendrick Perkins made his Oklahoma City debut last night against Washington, giving the Thunder a defensive dimension the team has sorely lacked.

Rivers, asked about the difference in his defense without his old intimidator in the paint, reserved judgment.

“I don’t know yet,” he said before last night’s loss. “Right now we just don’t have enough bigs, but when everyone is back, I’m hoping there is no difference. Perk’s a great defender. One of the best individual defenders. You can get guys to be great team defenders, but what Perk does as well as anyone in the league in my opinion is guard his own guy, and you never have to help.”

Nenad Krstic, who posted two rebounds last night after totaling 29 in his previous two games, has proven to be a player of another sort. He poses an entirely different set of problems for opponents.

“Nenad is not to that level yet,” Rivers said of Krstic’s defense. “Hopefully he gets there some day, but we have had to help a lot. But the reason is because we don’t have a lot of bigs to get into foul trouble.

“It will be a good problem to have,” he said of the possibility of having Krstic, Shaquille O’Neal and Jermaine O’Neal available all at once. “But Nenad will play. He’s just too valuable not to play. I’d like to have that problem soon.”

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So essentially he's saying both are talented centers with different strengths.

Our hope is the quickness and offense we get from Krstic more than offsets the defense we had with Perk. Celtic management was thinking we needed more offense and depth to compete and we were willing to sacrifice some defense to get it.

Sounds about right.

Yes,

Give and take. I hope we take!

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