Beaumont native Kendrick Perkins covers basketball, race and culture in new memoir
Kendrick Perkins discusses struggles and triumphs as part of an ongoing process, so “The Education of Kendrick Perkins” is both the title of his new memoir and an apt description of a seeker’s path.
Beaumont native Perkins has enjoyed a pair of successful careers: 13 seasons in the NBA, including a championship run with the Boston Celtics, and also renown as on-camera talent with ESPN.
Perkins’ book is anything but a straightforward hoops memoir, though its frank presentation of a life on the run at times recalls the behind-the-curtain view offered by some of basketball’s better books. But his vision for “Education” was broader. He imbues his story with the feel and pace of a game: narrative rotations cycle in and out of the book as he finds natural connections discussing basketball, race, class, family, history, media. Here Kevin Durant and James Baldwin share equal billing; as do salary cap decisions and Doll Test results.
To Perkins’ credit, the pieces snap into place like a parquet floor, despite what could’ve been jarring transitions from the court to culture, from childhood to adulthood, from observational to personal. Perkins possesses a sharp sense for place, which may be the attribute that pulls it all together. “As much as I grew up in Beaumont,” he writes, “I also grew up in ‘Dream Land,’” referring to his affinity for the career of Lagos-native, Houston superstar Hakeem Olajuwon.
Perkins paints scenes from his Peach Orchard home in Beaumont, where he was raised by his grandparents after his father left the family to pursue a basketball career overseas and his mother was shot and killed when Perkins was 5. While those with the means secured pairs of Air Jordans, young Perkins’ high-water pants couldn’t obscure his Olajuwon shoes bought at Payless.
He gets into the gristle of families both immediate (with a deep meditation on fatherhood) and transient (the tenuous sense of home that comes with playing in the NBA).
Perkins also maps out changes in the league, from a buttoned-up era defined by thencommissioner David Stern to one in which players feel increasingly empowered; from Michael Jordan declaring political indifference because “Republicans buy sneakers, too” to LeBron James leading dialogue about the shooting of Trayvon Martin.
If any one part of “The Education of Kendrick Perkins unites its varied parts, it’s the “Defense, Defense, Defense” section of its fourth chapter. To function in an elite way, Perkins suggests, a team’s defense must be active and not just reactive.