Doc Rivers inked a $35 million contract extension with the Celtics last week, and with the ink still drying on the five year deal Doc checked himself into Mass General Hospital Tuesday, 5/17/11, for throat surgery (to remove non-cancerous polyps) that will leave him unable to speak for two weeks: that’s most convenient, for after going on WEEI radio on Monday and second guessing his boss, Danny Ainge, on the Perk trade, Doc might welcome this brief vow of silence as a time to demur on any further opinions that diverge from the party line as laid down by the front office. You do the math.
When asked about the Perk trade in hindsight during the Monday radio interview “. . . would you do it [the Perk trade] if you had to do it over again”? Doc answered, “Well, I would wait until after the year is over. I’ll put it that way.” Doc went on to explain that he thought the trade disrupted the continuity and know-how of the team that had developed over years and that the new players, as competent as they might be, could not be expected to replace a player with Perk’s deep institutional knowledge both of his teammates and of the Celtic’s extensive playbook. In my personal opinion, there is also the implication in Doc’s words that “continuity” implies something intangible having to do with team chemistry; although he never directly mentioned that word, I do read the implication between the lines.
Doc’s answer diverges from the Celtic party line as laid down by front office honcho Danny Ainge. Ainge still stands firmly behind his trade and has repeatedly stated in interviews that if he had to do the trade all over again, he would do it in a heartbeat. To rebut the criticism that the Perk trade cost the Celtics a chance to compete for the title, Ainge was quoted in a CSNNE interview as saying: "I don't think that the presence of one player standing in the middle of the paint was going to [help] our offense score more, wasn't going to prevent LeBron James from shooting step-back 3-point jump shots with Paul Pierce and Jeff Green draped all over him, I mean, we scored zero points with four or five minutes to go in two games. That was not because of whom we had playing center. That had a lot more to do with our best players not being able to score."
Ainge contends that it was not the Perk trade that cost the Celtics, it was the team’s failure to perform. And Ainge has a valid point: the Celtics came within a matter of points and minutes of winning games two, four, and five in the second round playoff series with Miami. Injuries played a huge role in the Celtics being eliminated in five games. Very few people claim that had the trade not happened the C’s would have gotten past the Heat. And maybe it was the Celtics bad luck to catch the Heat at the very top of their game.
Well, there we have it, the party line from GM Ainge in the front office: he would do the trade again if he had a do-over; Responsibility for the post-trade slump falls on the players for their failure to perform; and from Doc, the coach, the divergence (from what sounds to me a little like front office spin) that in retrospect he would have waited till the season was over to make any trades.
What went wrong after the trade? We may never know, and all the speculation in the world may never approach the truth of the matter in all its complexity. Better to stick with the facts: before Ainge traded Perk the Celtics had gone 41 – 14, for a winning percentage of .745; post trade, the C’s went 20 – 16, including the playoffs, to end their season at a winning percentage of just .555.
The numbers don’t lie: they just leave us scratching our heads.
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