Even though Los Angeles Lakers All-Star guard Kobe Bryant may be new to the Twitter world, he sure learned fast how to have fun with it.

Bryant tweeted a photo of him and Dwight Howard holding their fist up to one another as if they were about to square off and throw down. The photo was a playful response to the yesterday's rumors that the two were a part of a verbal altercation following a New Year's Day loss to the Philadelphia 76ers.

In the photograph, taken in the training room of the team's practice facility, Bryant is smiling, Howard is sporting a comical growl and Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni is laying down on a training table in between them with a stunned look on his face.

"The mamba vs d12 !! It's on lol," Bryant wrote to accompany the photo.

The story reported that Howard had to be "restrained" from fighting Bryant after Bryant referenced Shaquille O'Neal's criticisms that Howard was "soft."

"It's completely false," said D'Antoni. "Completely false. It doesn't surprise me that reports like that get out, but most of the time it's a little sad, because it's not true. If it was true or close to true, then OK, but it's not close to true."

Howard called the story "funny" and questioned the motives of whoever made the story surface.

"We're losing," Howard said of the 15-18 Lakers. "Every little story that comes out is geared towards breaking our team up, but we're bigger than that. We're stronger than that and we're not going to let anything divide us."

Howard said that the source did not come from the Lakers' locker room.

"Obviously with the fake stories coming out somebody has something against our team," Howard said. "It's not us. Me and Kobe don't have a problem with each other. We're not beefing. So, for somebody to come out with a random story saying me and him got in a fight and for it to make ESPN like we're beefing is ridiculous. I just think it's funny."

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