By now the Kendrick Perkins trade has become more legendary than when Ed Macualey was traded for Bill Russell and when Red Auerbach traded their draft pick to Golden State for Robert Parish and Kevin McHale combined. The attention it has received is beyond absurd. So naturally, we'll give it one last tidbit of attention.
Jackie MacMullan's book with Shaq has already been discussed from here to Miami and LA and back, and that was before it was officially released. She recently conducted an online chat over at ESPN and one person (Marc from Malden, MA) asked her about the Perk trade:
Interesting that Shaq was paranoid about Danny's phone call. It seems like Ainge was checking with Shaq one more time regarding his return.
At any rate, the trade was basically done because he didn't want to pay Perk, and thus potentially filling up any cap space available for the summer of 2012. Nobody truly knows how much Perk wanted to be paid to stay here, and time will tell if Ainge was right. I still believe that when Tony Allen slipped away, it caused the 'Perk Trade' domino effect to begin its motion.
I have a tough time believing a lot of things Shaq says (even if it's written by Jackie Mac), but this is something that seems logical to me. Otherwise we will incessantly smash our heads into a wall trying to figure out why Ainge pulled the trigger on Perk.
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