Chronicling the Blake Griffin – Kendrick Perkins Aftermath
By Cody Brees
Now let’s remember that NBA players are people too, just like us! Most of them took to Twitter just as fast as the rest of the NBA fans. So what do people do when hundreds of NBA players do something? We focus on LeBron James! LeBron tweet moments afterward “Dunk of the Year!! @blakegriffin just dunked on Kendrick Perkins so hard!! WOW!! I guess I’m #2 now. Move over #6.” Apart from the strange reference to himself in 3rd person by his number, not sure why people are reacting so much to LeBron tweeting. With the hundreds of other NBA players tweeting much more ridiculous things, such as Amir Johnson saying “Perk just needs to sit down for the rest of the game SMH” and Al Thornton saying “Got damn Blake!!! Perkins career is over with!!!!”
Thunder players seemed to have a very different reaction however. After the game Perkins simply said “It happens.” Many Thunder players have been praising Perkins for stopping a 250 pound man in mid air on a defensive rotation. We even got a pretty good response from the normally low-key Durant. In response to the dunk he said “It was a layup, I think. He threw the ball in and got fouled and made a free throw,” he said. “So it’s three points at the end of the day.” The interview continued and Durant was asked if he was surprised that his dunk of Haywood in a WCF playoff game didn’t get the same attention and Durant shot back, “I knew that one wasn’t going to get attention because we never get attention like that,” he said. “We’re not an L.A. team or a Chicago team or a Miami team. So all our plays get thrown under the radar.”
So that is that right? Blake almost destroyed Twitter and Perkins in one night. Things appeared to be calming down then during an interview Perkins goes back at LeBron from left field.
“You don’t see Kobe (Bryant) tweeting,” Perkins said, according to the report. “You don’t see Michael Jordan tweeting. If you’re an elite player, plays like that don’t excite you. At the end of the day, the guys who are playing for the right reasons who are trying to win championships are not worrying about one play. They also are not tweeting about themselves talking about going down to No. 2,” Perkins added, according to the report. “I just feel (James) is always looking for attention and he wants the world to like him.”
Perkins went on to state that if he needs to make that rotation again, he does it every time, which is what this team needs to win. I was shocked when Perkins went at LeBron like that. I was expecting the typical response of “maybe if I was on the other end” or “I didn’t think it was that good of a dunk.” I have no idea Perkins’ mood when he said these things, but it is safe to assume he is tired of constantly being reminded of how Blake embarrassed him, and grumpy as usual. I am willing to bet that Perkins isn’t happy about any NBA player tweeting about that dunk, so why single out LeBron? Because he was asked about LeBron! Reporters don’t care what Amir Johnson and Al Thornton tweet about, it’s all LeBron. It was not like Perkins came out and made a press statement singling out James for what he said, he responded honestly to a question.
Now for the 3rd degree of reaction, LeBron was quoted on ESPN after the Heat’s loss to Orlando Wednesday night that he will not apologize for his tweet saying,
“I would never apologize about anything like that when I’m connecting to my fans. Now, if Kendrick Perkins dunked on somebody like that on the other end, I would have done the same thing,” James said. “If Perkins dunked on Blake Griffin or DeAndre Jordan or whatever the case may be, it would be the same thing. That’s just my love for the game and connecting with my fans.”
He went on to whine and complain about how people blame him for everything, and he is tired of it. After years and years of LeBron being the butt of jokes I found it odd that a statement from Perkins was the one that finally made him stand up for himself, but that is LeBron.
This tension just adds to last year when Durant called Bosh a “fake tough guy” and saying “he wasn’t going to let Bosh talk trash to me.” With these two teams very good and very young we can only hope this turns into a great rivalry for years to come. We know for sure these teams don’t like each other at least. If the two favorites hold up from the Eastern and Western conference, they would meet in what would surely be a blood bath of a NBA finals. Until then the Thunder and Heat have yet to play their two regular season games in OKC on March 25th and in Miami April 4th. Mark those down folks, those are the fun games.
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