According to a report from Kendrick Perkins earlier this week, the majority of GMs once believed Miami Heat guard Kendrick Nunn wouldn’t be an NBA player.
During ESPN’s The Jump earlier this week, former NBA player and current noted media luminary Kendrick Perkins had some things to say about the Miami Heat. In a discussion about the team, topics arose such as how surprisingly good they’ve been, and Perkins revealed some interesting information that Heat rookie guard Kendrick Nunn‘s agent had given him.
According to Perkins, agent Rich Gray informed him that he had spoken to the NBA’s general managers, and the majority of them thought he was not an NBA player. Whether that was because of concerns about his checkered legal history, or they simply thought he couldn’t play at a high enough level to make it in the league, it appears as though the league as a whole was quite low on him.
You can listen to the Nunn comments at the 3:10 mark of the above video.
Of course, Nunn did go undrafted and had to fight his way onto the roster via his performance in the Las Vegas Summer League, but once upon a time his collegiate performance was highly regarded.
In his senior season at Oakland University in Metro Detroit, he averaged 25.9 points per game, but shot just 43.5 percent from the floor and 39.4 percent from 3-point range. Of course, he’s made the most of his opportunities with the Miami Heat and has carved out a role in the starting lineup in his surprising rookie season.
Whether Perkins embelished this story or not (after all, he did try to insert Jimmy Butler into the MVP discussion later in the above clip, most likely only because they were talking about the Heat), it’s clear that no NBA teams were high on Kendrick Nunn coming out of college. While his whole story has not yet been written, it appears he’s trying to make the rest of the league pay for selling him short.