Kendrick Perkins may be on thin ice with six technical fouls this postseason, but the important thing is he's good to go Friday night.
"I might need to smile a few times," joked Perkins, who picked up his sixth and seventh technicals Wednesday before one of the two calls was rescinded. "But I've got to go out there and play. I can't worry about anything else besides going out there and doing my job tonight."
Seven technicals in one postseason is the limit — a player is issued a one-game suspension after the seventh tech, then another after the ninth, the 11th, and so on. Perkins knows that if he's T'd up once more, he'll be forced to sit a game out. But he's just got to put that out of his mind, he says.
"It's hard," Perkins said. "Just concentrating on getting the W, though. I know there's going to be times that I get tangled up in the paint. But I just feel like if I go out there and just worry about winning the game, no matter how we win, that comes second."
Perkins already missed all of the second half of Game 5 in Orlando on Wednesday night — he was ejected with 36 seconds left in the second quarter when official Eddie Rush issued him his second technical of the night.
With that call later rescinded, the Celtics obviously wish they could have their last 24 minutes of basketball back. But it's too late for that now, and Doc Rivers has his team focused on moving forward.
"We can't do anything about it," the coach said. "We really can't. We've got to move on from it. It happened, I don't think it happened on purpose, and I honestly thought Eddie Rush, right when he made the call, remembered [Perkins' first technical] and felt awful about it. But he couldn't do anything about it at the time. So what I told our guys is we still should have found a way. And we didn't. I was more upset at that, honestly, than at the techs."
With Perkins' technical count back at six, everyone on the floor will be keenly aware that one more is the magic No. 7. For the Celtics, it's a reason for caution; for the Magic, it's a motive to dig at Perkins and get under his skin.
"Yeah, they should," Rivers said. "I hope they do it so well that they get thrown out. That would be terrific.
"But you know, listen. Everyone has to try to have composure in this game and in every game that you play. There's way too much talk about elbows and all the physical stuff. At the end of the day, there's going to be a basketball game played, and the team that does that the best will win. That's got to be our message."
