Kevin Durant might continue to dispute it, but former player Kendrick Perkins maintains that he wore the captain’s band on the Oklahoma City Thunder squad. Perkins is known for making some outlandish statements in the past, and some of his actions as a player have been widely criticized, but as an NBA analyst, none of that has stopped him from speaking his mind.
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The 2008 NBA champion recently joined the Out The Mud podcast, where he gave flowers to his Boston Celtics teammate Kevin Garnett, calling him a leader who instilled the values of sacrifice and routine. Perkins then asserted that he, too, played a similar role as a senior statesman during his time with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
He made it clear that the other stars on that team, like Durant and James Harden, were very young and didn’t gel as well off the court.
“You’ve got James Harden, he’s 20, Russ [Westbrook], 19, KD 21,” he recalled. “When I get there, I am like, ‘Hold on. These young [expletive] are winning without no real chemistry. They ain’t even f**king with each other off the court. Damn! Russ and KD ain’t close?'”
At this point, Perkins claims he decided to lay the hammer down and set some ground rules. “I am watching them, they are working. They are getting between the lines … I was like, ‘I gotta separate this s***, man,” Perkins explained, adding that he needed to find a way to get them to click off the court.
And the best idea the former center came up with was the NFL. “Okay, football season here. So, at the time, I am a Cowboys fan. Russ a Cowboys fan. KD a Redskins fan. I am like, ‘Okay I got you.'”
Perkins put all three of them in a group text chain just to spark some football trash talk. “Next thing you know, we rent a PJ, go catch a Sunday game together. Then I form a group message again. They like to play boo,” he added, noting that he was staying in the Town Hall at the time. So they hung out, played boo, and watched football again.
“They came through. We are gambling now on the road. ‘Hey, look, I already reserved this backroom at the steakhouse, bro.’ They are like, ‘Bet, I got to find that.’ … And I got to pull you away from your such and such. Naah, man, you don’t even need your dawgs on the road with you. We are your dawgs,” Perkins further revealed.
“One thing I know, if you are trying to win a championship, and you f**k with somebody off the floor and start learning them off the floor, now you are going to go that extra mile for them on the floor.”
Well, whether any of it worked is difficult to say, since the OKC team sort of fell apart after Harden moved on to the Houston Rockets. Thankfully, Durant and Harden are still extremely close, and call each other brothers. As far as Perkins is concerned, it’s safe to assume he doesn’t get along with Durant anymore.
