There is no love lost between former NBA center Kendrick Perkins and former New Orleans Pelicans general manager Dell Demps.
Bring up Demps in conversation and the following words won't take long to come out:
“He’s a liar,” Perkins told Joe Vardon of The Athletic. “He was a liar. He just lied, man. He lied to me.”
Perkins still resents Demps for rebuffing a couple of trades, as the Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder attempted to deal for him at the NBA trade deadline of the 2015-16 season.
Demps initially complimented Perkins upon acquiring him in free agency, noting he “told me when I got to the Pelicans, ‘Wow, we never had a leader like you. I appreciate you, we want you to retire here, we want you to be here the next two or three years, blah blah blah.’”
Perkins is under the belief he would have come out on top regardless of what team he would have been dealt to had Dells accepted either offer:
“If I was on Oklahoma City, we wouldn’t have blown that 3-1 lead,” Perkins insisted. “There’s no way in hell we would have blown that. I’m not saying because of me playing, I am saying just my locker room presence. Then I think about it on the other hand — he cost me a championship.”
Perk thinks of himself as a difference-maker, even if he was averaging a futile 2.5 points and 3.5 rebounds as a back-of-the-bench veteran in New Orleans.
Dells has had plenty of faults during his long stint in New Orleans, but he's not to be blamed for this sheer lunacy that comes out of Perkins' head.
Perk signed with the Cavaliers in 2017, but was forced to join their NBA G League affiliate, the Canton Charge, to keep his career alive. That alone should say enough about how much influence Perkins would have had on the Cavs or the Thunder only a year before:
Criticize Dell Demps all you want but this is some absurd, delusional stuff from Perk (from @joevardon’s story in The Athletic)
He claims Dell lied to him. Ok. Well Perk was also terrible in New a Orleans. He didn’t earn a second deal.
And “cost me a championship” is comical. pic.twitter.com/jzUhTYM5Wj
— Scott Kushner (@ScottDKushner) April 22, 2020
To blame an NBA executive for a missed opportunity is one thing, but to blame him for the loss of hardware is flat-out delusional.
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