It was late November when Kendrick Perry started hearing the criticisms.
Not scoring enough. Not enough assists. Too passive. Too inconsistent.
It got so bad, the Sydney Daily Telegraph felt it needed to run a story about how the Kings — his Australian basketball team — weren’t planning to cut him despite his underwhelming play.
The crazy part? His professional career was seven games old.
“The critics or whoever — the people behind the computers — were tweeting out stuff like, ‘He could be gone, blah, blah, blah, this, that and the other,’ saying I wasn’t going to last a whole year, they should get rid of him and try to find a new point guard,” said Perry, a former standout guard at Youngstown State. “It was kind of difficult to me, but that’s part of going from a smaller setting in Youngstown to a big city and the professional basketball thing as a whole.”
Perry’s coaches stayed positive and his play improved, averaging 10.4 points, 3.6 rebounds and 2.4 assists in 24 minutes per game for the Sydney Kings, who finished seventh in Australia’s eight-team National Basketball League with a 9-19 record.
“It was an up and down season for me,” said Perry, speaking by phone recently from his home in Orlando. “Coming from the career I had in Youngstown where I had the ball predominantly in my hands to playing with a team with really, really, really good guys, I was just trying to find that balance — when to attack, when to make plays for others. The league in general is a very talented league and I just had rookie struggles early.
“My coaches gave me the confidence and the positivity I needed and game by game, I gradually got better. I think I ended the season on a pretty good note.”
The NBL is Australia’s main league and, competitively, is much closer to the NBA than major college basketball, Perry said. Each team is limited to two non-Australians. Sydney’s other American player was Josh Childress, the former No. 6 overall pick in the 2004 draft who spent eight years in the NBA with Atlanta Hawks, Phoenix Suns, Brooklyn Nets and New Orleans Pelicans.
Childress averaged 21 points, nine rebounds and four assists in 18 games, battling injuries along with several other Kings.
“I was blessed because I played with a great group of guys and we were very close as a team, but it was an unfortunate year for us because we had a lot of injuries,” Perry said. “It seemed like we were never at full strength. But no matter how many games we dropped, everyone kept a positive attitude and kept keying on the next game.”
Perry graduated from YSU last May after earning first team all-Horizon League honors his final three seasons. He ranks third on the Penguins’ all-time scoring list — and No. 1 since they jumped to Division I — with 1,991 points and also ranks first in steals (246) and free throws (504), second in 3-pointers (201) and third in assists (505).
After a summer league tryout with the Orlando Magic, Perry joined the Kings in late August, not knowing much about Australia other than the basics.
“I thought when I was going over there that I’d be seeing kangaroos crossing the road and just random wildlife, but it’s not like that at all,” he said of Sydney. “It’s very similar to the U.S.”
Perry had to get used to the time difference (15 hours ahead), the traffic (“insane”) and driving on the left side of the road (“That was the most difficult thing for me”) but learned to love the people, the culture and, in one case, the food.
“There are a lot of Thai food places over there, so I’ve grown a fascination with Thai food,” he said.
His favorite city — other than Sydney — was Cairns, a postcard-perfect city on the Great Barrier Reef with a passionate fan base for the home team, the Taipans.
“It kind of reminded me of Youngstown because it’s not the biggest city but it’s very community-oriented,” said Perry.
Perry isn’t sure what he’ll do next. He said the NBA D-League and the NBA Summer League are options. He could also return to Australia or play elsewhere overseas.
“I’ve been talking to my agent and I have a few things lined up for the next couple months,” he said. “I’ll just have to see how things pan out. You know me — I just kind of take it one day at a time.”
While in Australia, he kept tabs on YSU and the Horizon League, often tweeting during games. He compared this year’s Penguins to his freshman year, when there were a lot of new players and the chemistry wasn’t quite right.
“Me personally, I’ll never count out Coach Slocum and that coaching staff,” he said. “I’m excited to see the pieces they’re bringing in next year and I’ll continue to support them.”
Just don’t expect him to do it up close, particularly in February.
“I saw pictures,” he said of this year’s winter. “I think that was enough for me.”
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