Maybe it is all a work and Kendrick Perkins and JJ Redick really do like each other. It sure did not seem that way Tuesday morning on First Take though. Redick accused Perkins of implying that white voters favor white players when evaluating candidates for the NBA’s MVP award. He called it “the problem with this show.”
“Stephen A, I mean no offense to you and I mean no offense to First Take because I think this show is extremely valuable,” Redick said. “It is an honor to be on this desk every day. It really is, but what we just witnessed is the problem with this show where we create narratives that do not exist in reality.”
Perkins rolled his eyes and visibly mouthed the phrase “oh my God” as Redick accused him of implying that white voters for the MVP award are racist.
“I stated the facts,” Perkins shouted over Redick as the former guard continued to talk. “And you not about to sit up here and act like there’s something more than that.”
Last week was the first time Kendrick Perkins pointed out that only white players have been able to win the NBA MVP without being one of the league’s top ten scorers. While he has never explicitly said that the people that gave the awards to Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, and Nikola Jokic in those situations are racist, he has encouraged the audience to think about “what do those guys have in common.”
Members of the sports media outside of ESPN have called out Perkins. JJ Redick was the first one to bring the discussion to ESPN’s airwaves.
Perkins has been adamant that Nikola Jokic, who is the favorite for the MVP award this year, has not had as impressive of a season as the Philadelphia 76ers’ Joel Embiid. The comments have been met with particular scorn in Denver, where Jokic and the Nuggets are having the best regular season in the center’s consecutive MVP run.
