Oklahoma City Thunder center Kendrick Perkins says that he doesn't like Dallas Mavericks center Tyson Chandler and that Chandler doesn't like him, but Chandler says he doesn't have anything against the former Celtics big man.
"Me and Tyson never got along. I'm serious," said Perkins. "He don't like me, I don't like him and that's pretty much how it's been. Everybody always looks at me as kind of like a dirty player if you're on the opposite team, but he's just as dirty as anybody else."
On Tuesday, during the opening minutes of Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, both players received a technical foul after the two got entangled with one another and Perkins got in the face of Chandler. The NBA rescinded Chandler's technical foul on Wednesday after reviewing it.
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And even though their recent on-court confrontation seems to corroborate Perkin's description of their relationship, Chandler has a different story to tell.
"I have nothing against him," Chandler said of Perkins. "He won a championship with the Boston Celtics, and that's where I'm trying to take my team. I mean, I've got respect for him, what he was able to accomplish. But all the chippy stuff, the after-the-ball stuff, that's all nonsense and I'm not going to get involved with it."
But both players realize that they are too valuable to their respective teams to get thrown out of the game, regardless of whatever personal fued does or does not exist between them.
"Honestly, my motive is not to get into it with Kendrick Perkins," said Chandler. "My motive is to make my team better when I'm on the floor and give my team an opportunity to win. My team is not going to be better with me off the floor, so there's no reason for me to get into it with him. The only benefit that's going to have is me off the floor and giving them a better chance to win, so I'm not getting into it with him."
And Perkins said, "We're not going to get tossed, but we're going to play hard. I'm definitely going to play hard. I'm going to do whatever I need to do for my team to win. We both are going to come out here, we're going to compete and we'll go from there. We're going to keep banging."
(Sources: ESPN.com)
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