Doug Gottlieb: “What Kendrick Perkins is saying is that the only reason why Dirk, Jokic, and Steve Nash won the MVP was because we changed all the different criteria for MVP because sportswriters wanted guys with white skin to win… It’s disgraceful but it’s the world of basketball. It’s kind of like in baseball, and I don’t know if you want to call it racism or stereotyping, but there is a cultural clash that goes on in just about every locker room. You have Latin players that have a different way, style, and flamboyance in the way in which they play and it’s part of their culture. Then you have American born players and their style of baseball and it’s like a culture clash. In the NBA most teams are predominantly Black. Every basketball dude in America, if you’re a White guy this is what you go through. You’re not ‘really’ good, people just think you’re good because you’re White. I guess you can call it racism, it doesn’t bother me, it’s just the reality. This is how Kendrick thinks, how many people think, and I don’t get it. If you want to get down to the raw numbers, Kobe Bryant led the NBA in scoring at 35 a game, shot 45% from the field, 34% from three-point range, and averaged 4 assists a game. Steve Nash averaged only 18 points a game, shot 52% from the field, 90% from the free throw line, and led the league in assists, but his team won 9 more games. If you have a problem with things then you just have a problem with how MVPs are given out. Generally, when they’re given out you have to be on a successful roster. That’s the part that he’s missing. If we’re going to sit here and say ‘WHAT A ROSTER THEY HAD!’ [2005-2007 Suns], I guess. Shawn Marion, Raja Bell, Amar’e Stoudemire, Leondro Barbosa. Name me the Hall of Famers on that roster?? Kendrick Perkins doesn’t really know basketball, he just doesn’t. If you don’t get it, I can’t help you get it. If you don’t get that Steve Nash, who only averaged 18 points a game, but shot 53%, a point guard who is like 6’1”, 6’2”, shot 53% from the field, 45% from three, 90% from the free throw line, 11.5 assists, and oh yeah, his team won. Ask anyone on that roster, dude made Shawn Marion MILLIONS. He made Amar’e Stoudemire MILLIONS. Leondro Barbosa, MILLIONS. Raja Bell, MILLIONS. That’s not a great roster. They were a great ‘team’. Why? Steve Nash. Not because he’s White, not because he was born in Canada, not because people hated on Kobe, not because of anything other than the reality. It’s sad but that is actually the world of basketball. To this day I tell people, like, do you know Larry Bird was the baddest dude on the planet for a good period of time? Larry Bird dealt with it. Isiah Thomas: ‘If he was Black he’d be just another guy.’ You don’t cancel Kendrick Perkins, you just understand the reality of that’s actually a narrative in locker rooms and in the Black community in regards to White foreign and domestically-born players. Steve Nash was a bad, bad boy.”
Watch Doug Gottlieb of Fox Sports Radio call out ESPN NBA analyst Kendrick Perkins for a highly controversial take Perkins recently had that implied racism is behind Nikola Jokic’s bid for his third consecutive NBA MVP Award.
Perkins made allusions to Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash, and Jokic, and said MVP voters have ‘moved the goalposts’ for those players to win MVP, specifically mentioning Nash’s two MVPs in 2005 and 2006 when he memorably won the award over Shaquille O’Neal and then Kobe Bryant in consecutive seasons.
After naming all three players, Perkins asked ‘what do they all have in common?’, clearly referring to their skin color.
Bryant averaged 35.4 points per game that season, the highest of his career, but the Lakers were the West’s no. 7 seed with a 45-37 record, while Nash’s Suns won 54 games, and Nash averaged 18 points and led the league with 11.6 assists, and shot 53% from the field. Nash's Suns would knock out Bryant's Lakers in seven games in the first round of the NBA Playoffs that season.
Check out the segment above as Gottlieb rips Perkins for the ‘disgraceful’ take, and says of Perkins, “Kendrick Perkins doesn’t really know basketball.”
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