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Kendrick Perkins has played 9 NBA seasons; in his first two years in the league, he didn't even play 600 total minutes. Doc was the Celtics' coach in Perkins' second season and played him a total of 548 minutes in 60 games (and 28 total minutes in 6 playoff games) .
In 2011-12, Pop played Tiago Splitter, a second year player, more than 1,100 minutes in 59 games while averaging about 17 minutes in 13 playoff games. So, if you compare the players that way, Pop played Splitter twice as much as Doc played Perkins in comparable regular seasons and substantially more than Doc played Perkins in equivalent postseasons.
If you want to argue age, you can, but Perkins just turned 27 this year. So, at age 27, Perkins has finished 9 seasons in the NBA with several long playoff runs. At age 27, Splitter has finished two NBA seasons and has only once played postseason games beyond the first round.
Perkins didn't play 19+ minutes per game until his third season; Tiago played 19+ minutes per game in his second season.
Look, Pop has a some history with reluctance to play and develop inexperienced, raw big men. But I don't think there's any substance to a suggestion that Doc would have played Splitter substantially more than Pop did this year because Doc was willing to play Perkins a lot when Perkins was developing. When Doc had that chance, he didn't give Perkins minutes on a Celtics team that was barely better than .500 and had luminaries like Raef LaFrentz and Mark Blount getting the most minutes of any bigs on that roster.
History says there's no basis to argue that Pop would have never given a developing young big like Perkins minutes and Doc would have -- Doc had that chance early on in Perkins' career and elected against giving him minutes.
