A remarkable element of national NBA broadcasting versus national broadcasts for other leagues is the level to which the ex-player analysts play up their own abilities against current players. That includes people like ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins, who was never selected to an All-Star Team, an All-NBA Team, or an All-Defensive Team during his playing career. Yet, Perkins believes seven-time All-Star and three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić “wouldn’t have wanted this smoke” of facing him:
Kendrick Perkins on defending Jokic
“Jokic wouldn’t have wanted this smoke.” pic.twitter.com/pTSU3orXME
— n i k o l a e s t h e t i c (@nikolaesthetic) May 16, 2025
That clip came on ESPN’s NBA Countdown Friday, and came from host Malika Andrews stating “Perk, you wouldn’t have wanted to face Jokić in a Game 7 elimination game. Look at this: Jokić is one of two players to have 25 points, 10 rebounds, and five assists when facing elimination. The other player is LeBron James.” Perkins responds, seemingly seriously, “Jokic wouldn’t have wanted this smoke. Kobe said I was the best post defender in the league.” Analyst Bob Myers says “What? Huh?” Perkins says “Kobe Bryant, yeah.” Andrews says with a laugh, “You’re saying Jokić wouldn’t have wanted you? Oh-kay.”
Perkins is far from the first national NBA analyst to make grandiose claims about their playing career and how they’d do against today’s stars. But when that comes to Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famers like Charles Barkley (who’s had quite the flame wars with Perkins) and Shaquille O’Neal, that confidence, while perhaps misplaced, is somewhat understandable. While their claims on what they could do against today’s top players may be exaggerated and not accurate in some circumstances given their own games and the changes in the game since their long-ago careers, they’re at least talking with a Hall of Fame resume to back their comments up.
That’s far from the case for Perkins, as his “Leaderboards, Awards & Honors” page at Basketball Reference shows. The chief honors listed there are “2002-03 McDonald’s All-American” for his high school career. He never made an All-Star team, an All-NBA team, or even an All-Defensive team. He received three All-NBA points for one single season, 2010-11, and finished tied for 17th in Defensive Player of the Year voting for 2009-10 with one single point.
Perkins wasn’t even particularly close to reaching any of those awards. Looking at 2011, Al Horford, the third-team All-NBA center that year, received 62 points. Second-team center Amare Stoudemire earned 437 and first-team center Dwight Howard earned 593 out of a 595-point max.
Yes, those awards include offense, never Perkins’ strong suit given his 5.4 points-per-game career average. But even considering defense alone, Perkins received three All-Defensive Team points that season as well, with first-team center Howard getting 56 of 60 and second-team center Tyson Chandler earning 17. Tim Duncan (11 points) and Horford (7) were also centers ahead of him in that voting. Thus, the NBA voters didn’t think Perkins was in the vicinity of the best of his era, even when only considering defense.
Sure, voted awards don’t tell us everything about players, and there are challenges with them. But there’s nothing else particularly suggesting Perkins displayed otherworldly dominance, even solely on defense, apart from his hearsay relaying of a comment by Bryant (with no indication of what context that comment came in). Advanced stats appreciate him but don’t love him, giving him a career Win Shares of 27.9 and a career PER of 10.7. He was a fine player for 782 NBA games and a valuable part of the Celtics’ 2008 title (but not even part of their “Big Three” there), but it’s quite absurd to hear him claim a much more decorated player like Jokić wouldn’t want to face him, as even shown by his on-set colleagues’ reactions.
This isn’t to say that only the best of the best can serve as analysts post-career. Indeed, many of the top analysts in many sports weren’t superstars, and there have sometimes been arguments that those who didn’t find easy stardom can have more to offer from how hard they had to work to keep playing. And even superstars still get questioned, sometimes with thoughtful addressing of their points and sometimes with lame “RINGZZZ” chirps (a key part of various rebuttals to Barkley). The “you never played the game” argument is poor logic, and “you didn’t play the game at an All-Star level” isn’t significantly better.
But analysts’ playing careers are only part of their story, and it often doesn’t make a lot of sense for them to make any claims about how they’d do against current players (even with some level of time machine). And that seems particularly flawed when it’s a fine-but-limited player like Perkins drastically overstating his abilities beyond anything he ever showed on the floor. Sadly, though, without a time machine, we can’t see what a meal Jokić would have made of even peak Perk.