Oklahoma City Thunder: A bigger pain than Kendrick Perkins - NewsOK.com (blog)

on May 3, 2012M at 12:30 pm

I wrote about Kendrick Perkins for my Thursday column in The Oklahoman. How you love him as a teammate, despise him as an opponent. You can read the column here.

As usual, Nick Collison had some insightful things to say about the issue. He talked about how some guys’ goal is to get under your skin. That Perkins isn’t just going off like a mad man. He’s got a method to his physicality.

“For me, personally, as I got older in the league, guys like that didn’t bother me as much as younger, because you understand it more,” Collison said.

“I played with Reggie Evans. To me, he’s the No. 1 guy like that. He just finds so many different ways to get an advantage by getting under a guy’s skin.”

Evans is a backup power forward for the Clippers. He went to theUniversityofIowaand joined the Seattle SuperSonics as an undrafted free agent in 2002. So Evans has spent 10 years in the NBA because of his toughness.

Collison and Evans were teammates inSeattle. “I practiced against him,” Collison said. “I used to get so frustrated with Reggie. I think that helped me playing against guys like Perk.”

Every team needs guys like that. Not all are as defensively skilled as Perkins â€" yes, Gran Torino is defensively skilled. He knows how to position his body and use his girth to keep opposing centers from the spots on the floor they want to be. The difference between letting Andrew Bynum catch the ball on the low block, four feet from the basket, and letting Bynum catch the ball four feet further out is the difference between victory and defeat.

Not every tough guy in the league is so skilled, but they remain valuable. The little things add up.

-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.

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