Kendrick Perkins didn't mind being on the opposite end of Blake Griffin's dunk. That's the occasional casualty of playing defense under the rim. But Perkins isn't taking too kindly to LeBron James' congratulatory tweet about the dunk. Yahoo! NBA senior writer Marc J. Spears got the scoop on Kendrick Perkins' reaction to the buzz about famous dunk and James' tweet in which he called Blake Griffin's dunk the "Dunk of the Year."
“You don’t see Kobe [Bryant] tweeting,” Kendrick Perkins told Yahoo!. “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. I just feel [James] is always looking for attention and he wants the world to like him.”
Ouch. For accuracy sake, it's important to note twitter wasn't around in Michael Jordan's day. Although, if social media were accessible to him, I doubt Jordan would use it to congratulate opposing players.
But we live in different NBA culture in which branding and self-promotion impacts the types of relationships athletes have with each other and their audiences. Oddly enough, thanks to the endorsement opportunities opened by Michael Jordan and a free agency market that discourages teams to foster long-term relationships with athletes.
That being said, it's easy to understand or even appreciate Perkins' old-school mentality about endorsing opponents. But it's unfair to equate LeBron James' tweet with his commitment to competition. Every player in the NBA is chasing a championship, but probably no one wants one more than LeBron James to shed the monkey off his back.