Tommy Heinsohn: Trading Kendrick Perkins was "a great move"

I love Tommy Heinsohn just as much as the next Celtics fan.  He's biased, unfiltered and the biggest homer in the history of life.  I love everything about him, from telling the Celtics to run and push the ball up the court in 2-on-4 situations to his constant sighs and groans that are audible to all of New England to berating the officials on every call that goes against the C's, even when it is more than obvious that it was a perfectly good call.  He's a Celtic.  He always has been and he always will be.

There's a popular term going around right now that's been coined by popular Boston sports personality Mike Felger.  The term is "Green-teamer."  For those who don't know, a Green-teamer is a person that believes that the Celtics can do absolutely no wrong and everything that the team does, both on the floor and in the front office, is the perfect thing to do.  The franchise shouldn't be questioned about anything because they know what they're doing.  If you've read this blog long enough, you've noticed that I don't exactly fall under that category.

However, Tommy Heinsohn might be the biggest Green-teamer in the history of Green-teamers and he proved it when he said this to the Boston Heraldyesterday.

"People are beating (Ainge's) brains out because Perk is going to be a Hall of Fame player – that’s bull,” Heinsohn said. “He’s a good player. He was never in the end of the games. You finish with your best players. I'm not saying he wasn’t a good player. He was a very serviceable and functioning player. But all those considerations and the fact that they were probably going to lose him at the end of the year, I thought it was a great move because they got to pick who they wanted to fill in. Then they went out and got other people. They got (Carlos) Arroyo and (Troy) Murphy. (Ainge) did the best he could do. Unfortunately, the schedule worked against them because they were playing every other day so they didn’t have practice time. They were caught in between not having practices to save the legs of the veterans and having enough practices to bring these new players into the system. That never really worked out."

"They ran into a lot of problems," Heinsohn said. "Before the season started, I made this comment, 'If we can get on the floor what’s on paper, we'll win it all.' And we never were able to put it on the floor."

You're losing me, Tommy.  I do agree with the fact that Perk was never in the end-of-game situations throughout his time in Boston.  That role has belonged to Glen Davis ever since 2009.   That's just a fact.  I even understand his point about trading Perk so that the Celtics could get something for him instead of just letting him walk and not getting anything in return after the season.  I could wrap my head around that.  It doesn't make me disagree with it any less, but you could make that argument.

But Tommy says that it was a great move because they were able to pick who they wanted.  The Celtics wanted more offense.  Jeff Green was supposed to bring in more offense.  Nenad Krstic was supposed to bring in more offense.  They didn't do that.  Instead, they came off the bench, played sub-par defense and had some struggles on offense.  The Celtics stumbled through the remainder of the regular season, lost home-court advantage and were knocked out of the playoffs by Miami in five games.

There's a reason why Danny Ainge is getting his brains beaten out right now.  He traded away the starting center of a team that had lost Game 7 of the Finals the previous season after he went down with an injury and was on top of its conference more than halfway through this season, got rid of the entire bench except for Davis, Delonte West and Von Wafer and expected this team—whose window is slamming shut, by the way—to readjust fast enough to stay on their pace and cruise to an NBA championship.  Misjudging the talent you're receiving from a trade, counting on a 39-year-old, 350-pound human bandage to be your anchor in the middle and bringing in a bunch of leftovers and trying to convince the fan base that they'll be exactly what the team needs usually doesn't warrant rose pedals being thrown at your feet and having grapes get fed to you.  That isn't doing the best you can.

I'm not blaming Ainge and "The Trade" for the loss to Miami.  Perk wasn't going to stop LeBron James and Dwyane Wade from hitting big shot after big shot out on the perimeter.  He wasn't going to help the Celtics score down the stretch.  But Perk could have helped this team start the series in Boston instead of in South Beach, which might have kept the Celtics from digging themselves into such a massive hole to begin with.

I don't care what you say.  It didn't pass the Jay Bilas eye test.  It wasn't a great move. 

Sorry Tommy.  I'm not buying what you're selling.