LeBron James won’t apologize for tweet on Griffin’s dunk

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LeBron James took to Twitter to express his excitement after Blake Griffin’s monster dunk over Oklahoma City’s Kendrick Perkins.

The Miami Heat star wrote: ‘Dunk of the Year! @blakegriffin just dunked on Kendrick Perkins so hard!!! Wow! I guess I’m No. 2 now. Move over #6.’

James’ unbridled enthusiasm apparently didn’t sit well with Perkins, who told Yahoo! that he wasn’t pleased by the forward’s emphatic reaction to his nearly 3.5 million followers.

“You don’t see Kobe [Bryant] tweeting,” Perkins said. “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.”

When James was told of Perkins’ adverse reaction to his tweet, the forward immediately fired back.

‘I would never apologize about anything like that when I’m connecting to my fans,’ James told ESPN.

‘Did I call him out? I mean, did you read the tweet? Did I call him out? I can see why he felt embarrassed. I don’t think I was the only one to react to the unbelievable play by Blake and that’s what it was all about,’ James said.

Do you think James owes Perkins an apology?

Was James out of line and did his tweet serve to further mortify Perkins? Or is Perkins overreacting to a spontaneous and benign moment of excitement by James?

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--Melissa Rohlin