Celtics Owner Reveals Why Former Player Wasn’t Invited To Championship Parade
June 21, 2024, was a beautiful summer day in Boston. The sun was shining, the air was full of green confetti, and over a million people gathered downtown to watch the Boston Celtics’ championship parade.
The duck boats rolling through the streets carried dozens of Celtics players past and present. However, one former player was notoriously absent as the team celebrated its NBA-record 18th title.
Kendrick Perkins, a key member of Boston’s 2008 championship squad, was not invited.
During a recent interview on the “Club 520” podcast, team owner and governor Wyc Grousbeck confirmed that Perkins was not invited to the citywide celebration and explained why.
“He wasn’t invited to our parade last year, that is true, because he’d been giving people a lot of (bleep),” Grousbeck said. “I had family members of players saying, ‘If that guy’s in the parade, we’re not in the parade.'”
Perkins spent the first seven and a half seasons of his 14-year career with the Celtics, helping them win a championship in 2008 and reach the NBA Finals in 2010 as their starting center. However, he hasn’t been on the best terms with them since they traded him to the Oklahoma City Thunder midway through the 2010-11 season.
Now a TV analyst for ESPN, Perkins has often been critical of his former team on air, rubbing many in the organization the wrong way. Accordingly, Boston decided to exclude him from the parade despite inviting several of his teammates from 2008, including Paul Pierce, Brian Scalabrine, Eddie House and Leon Powe.
Perkins addressed his absence during an appearance on 98.5’s “Felger & Mazz” radio show last June, calling Scalabrine a “coward” and saying he probably would have declined an invitation anyways.
“Nine times out of 10, I would’ve turned it down,” Perkins said. “That’s not our moment. That’s 2024’s moment. Let those guys have their moment.”
They did. Unfortunately for Perkins, he wasn’t part of it.