DALLAS MAVERICKS: Beat the Kings with their all new, all different lineup. There's a Sportsfilter thread on that trade, raising the prospect of David Stern having to award Mark Cuban the trophy.

Meanwhile, Ken Layne some good points on the Iverson/Bryant debate. Ken thinks that a poor kid emulating Kobe has a chance at being successful at any various walks of life --due to Kobe's sophistication-- whereas a poor kid emulating Iverson only has a chance at being an NBA basketball player, which is obviously unlikely for most poor kids (or anybody). But I think poor kids are pretty unlikely to emulate Kobe, who has never to my knowledge been a poor kid; he isn't exactly from Philadelphia but from Lower Merion, which is right on the edge of the city and a pretty wealthy area, I think. There's nothing in Kobe for a poor kid to emulate, whereas Iverson is a more familiar figure. Maybe his way of "keeping it real" while being a millionaire is sort of a put on at this point, but AI is only going with what he knows. You can fault him for not moving past that yet, but he's less of a jerk than when he started, he's young yet, and --as Ken points out-- he always plays like he means it. I think he's the more interesting player out of the two of them.