Did Danny Make The Right Call Not Re-Signing Perkins?

Before fans get too excited, note that the title says "not re-signing, as opposed to "trading." When you have the best record in the league and it's your last shot to win a title with an aging core, you don't trade your starting center and best player's best friend for a backup to your all-star small forward. Now that that's out of the way we can get down to the business of evaluating whether re-signing Perkins would have been a wise move. So far the results are looking like Danny might have been wise to avoid locking Kendrick Perkins up long term.

The Thunder aren't complaining. They have the best record in the league right now. They defeated the Hornets last night to improve to 10-2. I'm sure Perkins played solid defense, but he finished with 0 points and 3 rebounds. Perkins is averaging only 5 point and 6 rebounds on the season. Despite being a year and a half removed from knee surgery, Perkins is not the same player that he was in Boston. I mean he'll do the dirty work and any team would love to have him, but if Danny evaluated that Perkins wasn't a safe investment moving forward, results are looking like he could be correct.

Similar to Leon Powe who was let go by the Celtics and never performed to the levels he had in Boston maybe the Celtics docs saw something in Perk that brought up red flags moving forward. The Celtics didn't need to trade Perkins. They had his Bird rights and could have signed him to whatever they wished last month if they had retained him. So the story that we had to trade him, because he was leaving is bunk. Also, Perkins would have taken less to stay in Boston I'm sure.

While Perkins doesn't look like the same player in OKC, maybe it's simply the system. Maybe if he was in Boston, he'd be putting up better numbers. Maybe we'd have the best record in the league, as opposed to the Thunder and Bulls. Who knows? But if the Celtics saw something in Perkins that made them determine that inking him long term would hurt the franchise's rebuilding efforts rather then help them, letting Perkins go might have been the right call.

What I would have done? Well I wouldn't have agreed to the piss poor offer the Thunder gave us. I would have held out either for Ibaka instead of Krstic or I would have walked away from talks when the Thunder refused to part with James Harden and pawned Jeff Green off on us. Then in the offseason assuming it was determined Perk wasn't a wise long term investment, I would have signed and traded him to one of these teams dying for a center this past offseason. 

We can't get back our title shot that was thrown away by Danny's move last season, but moving forward do you think the Celtics would have a brighter future with Rondo and Perkins locked up long term and cap space to add to them or with just Rondo and more cap space? Would star players be more likely to come to Boston with Perk there or without him? My guess right now at this very moment is that re-signing Perk would have helped us attract free agents, but based on his declining play in OKC it's not as black and white as it was before. So what are your thoughts?