If you put a bunch of 6-foot-something men at the peak of their athletic abilities competing day in and day out for a living in any space, chances are they will start swinging at something, or someone, for that matter. NBA players are no different. Of course, in 2025, people frown upon brawls and consider basketball players not only as top athletes but also as role models. But in the day of Kendrick Perkins, emotions, rather than PR teams, dictated proceedings.
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The NBA has had some wild brawls over the years. For instance, in 2004, Ron Artest went into the stands to confront an Indiana Pacers fan. Dial the clock further back and you will find yourself crunching popcorn while watching Larry Johnson and Alonzo Mourning dance the lambada!
Even the legendary Larry Bird found himself in a physical altercation with Detroit Pistons’ Bill Laimbeer during the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals. If brawls are one thing, locker room fights are something else entirely. And Kendrick Perkins knows about it all too well.
“That window of 2007 to 2010, you have to realize it was so many f****** altercations. Hands, furniture moving, Budweiser bottles getting bust on people’s heads,” he stated.
“Us having to hold Doc [Rivers] and [Rajon] Rondo back. Ray and Rondo getting on gloves because they didn’t like each other. And we just had them box it out in the waiting room,” Perkins added. “Like literally box it out,” he reiterated for the benefit of those still in disbelief!
Well, that seems like a lot. Surely, this had to be the extent of it. Right? Unfortunately not. Perkins continued listing names like they were lyrics to a Nina Simone number.
“Tony Allen and Big Baby full out altercation, fight on the plane. Eddie House and Big Baby [Glen Davis] tore up my hotel locker room, I mean, my hotel room in San Antonio, while we were playing… Paul and TA after we hit one of the spots, they get into an altercation,” the Boston Celtics star added to Allie Clifton’s surprise.
“We fought, we fought like a m******** but we dabbed it up afterwards. It was like, ‘Alright, we move on’ type s***'” Perkins added, noting that they had developed such incredible bonds as teammates and brothers that those fights didn’t matter.
Brothers fight. That’s just how life works. He maintains that when they wanted to get something off their chest, “it was what it was.” However, there was one particular instance that Perkins still hasn’t let go.
“I have to say, one that p***** me off the most … I hate when someone gets bullied, right? So, we got Von Wafer. We have Delonte West. Those two guys are fighting for the last spot on the roster in 2010. So what they would have to do is play 3 on 3 after training camp in preseason…” he continued.
“This had been building up, he [West] had already been doing the workouts, we were watching because it’s that intense … D West talking s***, it’s elbows, on the floor, they were getting into it. Von, he’s talking and he’s competing but he’s not the level that D West was on,” he noted, explaining that West was ready to kill or die for that last spot.
Von, however, happened to win the game on the floor that fateful day. He was chilling out in the locker room when West came up to him and started asking about the trash he had been talking about on the court. It soon turned physical, and as Perkins describes it, Wafer was “leaking.”
At this point, Shaquille O’Neal got involved and egged them on to make it a bigger fight than it already was. Perkins, however, wasn’t having it. He told Shaq to park it since Wafer didn’t even want to fight in the first place. So Perkins simply put an end to it by not letting Shaq drag this out for his own entertainment.
