Note: I promise this will be the last Kendrick Perkins post for a while. I just thought this was an interesting point about the big guy. You can't always paint a player as wide a brushstroke as being a "great defensive player" or an "overrated defensive player." Sometimes it is more complicated than that.
The post-season is all about match-ups, so Perkins was going to sink or swim based on who he was matched up against. For those 17 games, it was crystal clear that Perkins could do one thing very well defensively and another thing not at all. The thing Perkins was able to do well was body up against other power forwards and centers and fight them on the block. The thing that Perkins could not do at all was guard players in open space.
Just like some players are good at shooting while others are better at slashing or passing, sometimes guys have different skillsets on defense. Sometimes those skills mesh well with the people around them, sometimes it takes a little bit of time to develop chemistry. I miss the big lug and I am hoping for his sake that he and his new mates can find some better chemistry next year so they take that next step as a team.