So who is the black center Boston can love? No, not Bill Russell, he was so … so forward, but clean and articulate of course.  No silly it’s Kendrick Perkins.  Boston is the type of city that can embrace black athletes when they behave, retire or have been shipped out of town.  Or should I say bused?

The Miami Heat defeated the Boston Celtics in their Eastern Conference semifinal series on May 11th, but that was not the real story of the night for Boston fans and Real-Basketball-People.  Dwyane Wade had perhaps his most complete and efficient playoff series ever, but he was not the real basketball story. LeBron James snatched the ‘you’re not clutch’ monkey off his back, beat it to a pulp, threw it violently against the $2,000 NBA Rectangular Backboard with Center Strut and stomped on its torso after leaping from the top of that backboard, but even that was not what Real-Basketball-People gleamed from the series.  Real-Basketball-People were focused on the gaping hole left by the absence of the inimitable Kendrick Perkins.

So who are the Real-Basketball-People?   Boston fans, streaming media with a bone–but not a case–against LeBron and ex-NBA player commentators desperately delaying their transition to normal jobs where being spectacularly wrong could have repercussions.

Real-Basketball-People had no doubt that the absence of Perkins–traded earlier in the year by Danny Ainge for additional wives to be named later–was the obvious reason to explain the Miami beat-down of Boston. It had to be in order to avoid exposing their anti-Heat remarks this season as glorified temper tantrums. Almost on cue later the same night, the Nederland native exploded for 5 points and 3 rebounds in 23 minutes of action. The 5 points scored raised his 2011 playoff average to 4.6 points per game and raised his FG% to almost 43%.