Steve Mitchell-US PRESSWIRE

Kendrick Perkins got banged up this past season. Perkins has now had to have two surgeries since the season ended, the most recent being on his left wrist to repair a torn ligament, the team announced today in a press release.

Perkins’ first surgery was to repair a partially torn right groin that he injured in Game 4 of the Thunder’s first round sweep of the Dallas Mavericks. The wrist injury occurred during the Western Conference Finals against the San Antonio Spurs.

The more you hear about Perkins’ injuries, the more it hurts Thunder fans. Perkins hurt the team much more than he helped them during the final two series of the playoffs against the Spurs and the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals.

The Thunder faced smaller, quicker lineups in those series and every minute Perkins was on the floor felt like survival mode for OKC. Even a healthy Perkins would have been ineffective against those teams and knowing that there was a legit reason to sit Perkins since he was injured this badly is hard to think about.

Perkins is set to make $7.8 million next season, $8.4 million in 2013-14 and $9.1 million in the final year of his contract in 2014-15. Perkins’ name has come up quite a bit with amnesty talks.

The Thunder will not amnesty Perkins this summer though because they simply can wait on this. The Thunder will be tight for cash while trying to keep James Harden and Serge Ibaka in the future and will need to clear as much cap as possible to do so. The Thunder can hang on to Perkins for next season and not have to worry about going into the luxury tax threshold even if they do extend Harden this summer.

Next summer if the Thunder are going “all-in” to keep Harden and Ibaka, and they probably will be, we can expect Perkins to get amnestied to free up more space for them.

It will be interesting to see if Perkins sees any decline in minutes this coming season in anticipation of the inevitable amnestying of him. The importance of players like rookie Perry Jones and Cole Aldrich developing will be even more important this coming season if the Thunder will part ways with Perkins.

While Perkins was not valuable against the Spurs or Heat, he still does hold plenty of value when playing a team like the Los Angeles Lakers who will be starting Andrew Bynum and maybe even Dwight Howard.

The Thunder have as good a chance as anyone to win the title next season and they will need a healthy Kendrick Perkins to make it to the NBA Finals. They just may be better off without him if they get there again.

Perkins had surgery on that groin Thursday and will miss 4-6 weeks before returning to the normal offseason routine.

Perkins did not miss any time in the playoffs because of the injury and the Thunder withheld the extent of the injury until after the playoffs.

In the final two rounds of the playoffs against the Spurs and Heat, Perkins was not much of a factor at all and actually hurt the Thunder more than helped them. San Antonio and Miami went with smaller lineups nullifying Perkins’ impact and the large amount of time he spent on the floor could have cost the Thunder the NBA title.

That is in the past now though and Perkins’ future with this team is still important. He truly is one of the best one-on-one post defenders in the NBA and with the Lakers’ improving their roster this offseason, a potential Western Conference Finals meeting will pit a lot of responsibility on Perkins’ defense.

The Thunder parted ways with backup center Nazr Mohammed this summer leaving Perkins’ backups to be Cole Aldrich and Hasheem Thabeet. Neither of those two would have a chance at cracking the starting lineup over Perkins again reinforcing the value Perkins does have.

The future of the NBA and this Thunder team is playing smaller lineups. That will mean more Nick Collison and Serge Ibaka and less Perkins.