Darnell Mayberry has this great quote from Perk in his Thunder Rumblings today:
- “It kind of had me scared today in the film room the way the coaches were. I thought we were playing the damn Dream Team tomorrow.”
- Perkins went on to say the Cavs “are the best pick-and-roll team in the league.” “You’ve got (Dion) Waiters and you got (Kyrie) Irving who can come off and pull up at the 3 at any time,” Perkins said. “I think Irving’s shooting 46 percent. Waiters is shooting 52 percent from the 3, and they both can split the pick-and-roll, get in the paint and cause havoc. So it’s a lot on the bigs. And you’ve got Varejao who’s going to set good screens. So it’s a good challenge for us.”
Perk admitted he remembers the Thunder suffering a 96-90 home loss to the Cavs last year. He said it’s on his mind now. “They snuck up on us,” he said.Perk never forgets. The article also talks about Perk's full court press of Pistons' point guard Brandon Knight. Perk was firing himself the way he knows best, with defense.
Brooks on Perk’s one-man, full-court press: “We just put that in. The Perk. The Perkinator. He was all over the place. He had a lot of energy, and it was good. We do that with certain teams, (what) we call shadow the backcourt with certain bigs that we don’t feel that are comfortable enough handling the ball, bringing the ball up and making plays. There are some bigs that do like (Joakim) Noah, for instance, in Chicago. We didn’t want to do that with him because he’s a guy that can bring it up the court and make a good play out of it.”
- Brooks went on to praise Perk’s overall performance against the Pistons. Perk matched his career high with six assists. “Perk had a good game,” Brooks said. “I didn’t realize he had that many assists. I mean, he really had a solid game for us defensively and offensively.”
- Perk said he was going for 10 assists. “I never had 10 assists before, but I was trying to get it,” he said. “But I was just getting back to that stage of trying to actually set the tone, showing guys, especially young guys that you can also have fun not just scoring the ball but passing the ball also. So just trying to build good habits. That’s about it.”
- Perkins said Serge Ibaka’s continued growth offensively is not surprising to him. “I knew he was going to get it rolling. I watch Serge, he comes in every night about 7 o’clock getting extra work in. He works so hard, man, and he’s always working on his craft so it’s just paying off.”
