STUFFED!!! USA Today Gets Olympic-Sized Scoop On Lebron James

SUSAN PAGE'S SLICE OF "the Fourth Estate, or whichever estate" as Mitt Romney calls the press, got an EXCLUSIVE Olympic "sports" story when it reported this, which went viral worldwide:

LeBron James has been rejected before.

He was denied a championship for his first eight seasons in the NBA.

But who in their right mind would turn down a dinner invitation with King James (if you live outside of Cleveland that is)?

Well, someone with a curfew in the Olympic Village, it turns out.

Lauren Perdue, one of the top U.S. swimmers who swam the first leg of the 4x200-meter freestyle relay, first sent out a tweet before the London Games acting flabbergasted when she apparently met a fellow, more recognized Olympian.

"Lebron James just invited me to dinner…Um wuuuutttt?!?" she tweeted.

Lauren's scholarly tweet was then probed with an investigative blog spot by the Charlotte Observer:

LeBron did take a liking to Perdue, though, who is a star swimmer at the University of Virginia. So did he really ask her to dinner? 

 "He did," Perdue said. "He was kind of joking but he was basically like, 'Would you like to come eat with me at the dining hall?' And I said, 'Um, I'm sorry, I have a curfew. So I turned that one down, yeah." 

One more note: Perdue said LeBron was "gracious" and certainly didn't imply that he was asking her to anything other than a meal at the Olympic Village dining hall.

WHATEVER ...