For a guy who was all over YouTube and twitter as the latest victim of a monster Blake Griffin dunk, Kendrick Perkins was philosophical after the game.
“It happens,” Perkins said in the corner of the Thunder locker room. “A the end of the day if you’re a shot blocker, you’re going to get dunked on. It was a great play that he made. Obviously I wish I wasn’t in it, but it was a great play that he made.”
It all happened so fast, neither Perkins nor Griffin said they were sure how it came together.
“It’s the timing of the play, it’s the timing of when I got the pass, and also the late rotation,” Griffin said. “If all that comes together at the right time, then those thins happen. It’s not like I caught the ball and thought ‘okay, let’s go make something happen.’ It just came together.”
So how did he know it was huge?
"(D’Andre Jordan’s) reaction is always my gauge on what the dunk was like,” Griffin said."I think that time he screamed, grabbed me and bear hugged me. I figured he thought it was cool.”
Perkins said he was just trying to protect the rim.
“I didn’t know what happened. I just knew I was trying to get to the rotation,” Perkins said, adding it was a clean dunk, not a foul by Griffin (as some had suggested on twitter). “Our defensive coverage had broke down and that’s what it was.”
What it was is the dunk of the year. And Perkins is going to be seeing himself on highlight packages for a long time.