The Boston Celtics welcomed back a handful of legends from the past for their celebratory banner-raising on Opening Night, but 2008 champion Kendrick Perkins was not among those in attendance — and it wasn’t a coincidence.
Perkins, currently an analyst for ESPN, isn’t seen as a friendly face around TD Garden anymore. The 39-year-old, who helped raise Banner 17 alongside Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen — who did attend the ceremony — has since been cold-shouldered by the organization due to Perkins’ comments when on air. It’s reached a breaking point, now leaving Perkins blackballed from the team entirely.
“He was asking everyone to get a spot at TD Garden, to be there for this moment of history, and to try to soften up the relationship that is broken,” one source told Steve Brenner and David Scott of The U.S. Sun.
There’s a fine line between being critical, which Perkins was hired to be, and being disrespectful while doing so. Evidently, the Celtics feel as though Perkins has crossed that in recent years by punching down on the organization from calling for Boston’s front office to split up Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, to questioning the intelligence of head coach Joe Mazzulla — Perkins claimed Mazzulla’s brain, if placed in a bird, would cause the bird to fly backward during an installment of “NBA Countdown.”
Brian Scalabrine, one of Perkins’ former teammates, insinuated that Boston had no interest in welcoming Perkins back for its duck boat parade this past summer. Scalabrine claimed the current state of Perkins’ relationship with the Celtics isn’t “an open-arms thing,” leading many to speculate including Perkins, who called Scalabrine a “coward.”
That run-in also didn’t help Perkins’ case for a warm welcome back.
“The requests were made in the weeks and until the day before the opening night, and he tried to talk to people in the front office and to see if some players could push to have him there but no one accepted to do so,” Brenner and Scott reported.
Before the Celtics returned to action to pick up where they left off and raise their record 18th banner, Perkins called out Tatum for setting the “selfish” goal of targeting a career-first league MVP award this season. Perkins, while claiming the take wasn’t negative, blasted Tatum for setting a personal goal… even though Tatum also predicted the Celtics would win the NBA Finals again, and this all took place during a segment for “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”
Even if the Celtics do repeat as back-to-back champions, it seems as though Perkins is too deep in Boston’s bad side as more of a foe than a friend.
