Forget Rookie of the Year.  In Arizona Stephon Marbury wants rookie teammate Amare Stoudemire to be on a plane to Atlanta this February for the All-Star Weekend, and not as a participant in the Rookies-Sophmore game.

"He's been playing like an All-Star. If (Houston's) Yao Ming is going to make it, then Amare for sure would make it. That's not even close."

Stoudemire, one of many players to jump from High School to the NBA in recent years, is averaging 11.3 points and 8.7 rebounds per contest, good enough for 5th and 1st among rookies respectively.  These numbers, however, do not reflect the impact he has made of late.

"With Amare playing like an All-Star, it's hard to beat us," Marbury said after the 20-year-old forward scored 19 points and snared 13 rebounds in a 103-84 Phoenix victory Sunday. "This was Amare's game."

Stoudemire, told of Marbury's remarks, said, "That's a pretty bold statement right there. But I think I'm doing just as well (as Yao)."

"Yao Ming just seems to get a lot more hype than I do, which is good. I'd rather not have that much hype and just do my job."

Chris Tomasson of the Rocky Mountain News reports that the three team trade between Denver, Houston and the Sixers was approved by the NBA when it should not have been. The deal was approved on December 18th. But one of the players in the deal, Art Long, was not eligible to be traded until December 30th.

The league has decided it will not rescind the trade.

Under CBA rules, a newly signed player can  not be traded until December 15th or three months after his signing date. Long was signed on September 30th, just before training camp opened. That means he was traded 12 days before he was eligible.

"After the trade was approved, it was discovered that under the league's trade rules, Art Long was 12 days shy of the waiting period required before he could be traded," said NBA spokesman Mark Broussard, who said the league sent all teams a letter of explanation. "After taking into account the effect rescinding the trade would have on the teams and players involved, and the fact that it would have been allowable 11 days later in any event, it was decided to let the trade stand."

The Rockets shot lights out Monday night. They shot so lights out -- 54 percent from the field, 100 percent from the foul line -- that the lights actually did go out for almost the last three minutes of the game. A storm-induced power surge caused the problem, we were told later.

This would not prove a good thing, though, for the Houston kids. In a resultant gloaming, the game's definitive power forward for the ages let loose with some thunder and lightning of his own. But, looking for a bright spot in the Compaq Center's semi-darkness, we'll conclude it was good for Yao Ming to see a vintage Karl Malone, to see him go off, scoring 31 points, for old time's sake. It's important for Yao's historical perspective, for his understanding of who's who and what's what in NBA lore.

The 20-year-old Eddie Griffin, a born-in-the-USA, city-ball graduate, has grown up watching Malone live up to the "Mailman" nickname he brought to the pros 18 years ago, delivering 35,200 points since he left backwoods Louisiana for Salt Lake City. But Yao, 22, needed to see it for himself, just so he would have a frame of reference.

Now we know. For all those years it seemed as if the Jazz could run that offense in the dark, they finally did.

John Stockton might have closed his eyes. It didn't matter. He knew where Karl Malone would be. Malone might have never looked to find Stockton. He knew the ball would be there.

The Rockets shot the lights out at Compaq Center -- with the help of a 60 mph squall that hit Greenway Plaza with just less than three minutes left to play, blowing away half the arena's mercury vapor lights.

Yao that they've seen him first-hand, the Jazz are believers, too.
     
Rockets rookie Yao Ming, Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said after Utah's 96-91 win over Houston on Monday night, is "a wonderful player."
     
And Yao.
     
"It's wonderful to see a guy that has all those skills in the game of basketball," Sloan said of the well-proportioned 7-foot-6, 296-pound center from China. "He's been well-coached and well-trained to play this game the right way. He passes the ball, and he does so many things."

...

Much talk in the Rockets locker room centered on Malone, whose 31 points were a season-high.
     
"Malone was phenomenal," Houston coach Rudy Tomjanovich said.
     
"I think Karl Malone is the strongest person I've gone up against in the NBA," Yao said.
     
Then this, from Steve Francis: "I'd love to see (Malone) play as many years as he can. Hopefully, I will be able to do the same thing myself."

Leave it to the Jazz to avoid getting swept up in Yao Fever.

Their first experience with 7-foot-6 Chinese rookie Yao Ming left Utah's players and coaches impressed and intrigued -- with Greg Ostertag.
   
Yes, Yao, whose face is on billboards all over town and who has drawn a Chinese news media contingent that numbers more than a dozen, played well, scoring 18 points, collecting seven rebounds, and forcing the Jazz to shoot far more jumpers than normal.
   
But the defense applied by Ostertag in the second half -- capped by an improbable swat of a Yao hook shot in the final two minutes -- seemed to impress the Jazz even more than the Rockets' new irresistible force.

Think the sun is setting on Karl Malone's career? Then know this: The future Hall of Famer has some experience hitting big, pressure shots as the light dwindles.
   
Malone scored a season-high 31 points and hit three long jumpers in the final 90 seconds Monday night, a vintage performance in the half-lit Compaq Center that lifted the Jazz to their third straight road victory, 96-91 over the disbelieving Rockets.
   
When a 60-mph Texas squall knocked out half the lights in the arena late in the fourth quarter, referees asked both teams whether they wanted to wait 15 minutes or more for the lights to return. Malone, harkening back to his boyhood days in Summerfield, La., was quick to answer: Let's play.
   
"It was kind of like [being] a little boy out there playing at sunset. You want to make that last shot before you go home because Mom said 'Don't let the sun go down and you're not at home,' " Malone said. "I didn't let the sun set on me. I would have gotten my ass whupped."

SportsTicker Staff Writer Craig Rondinone is definitly not a Nuggets fan.  However, he does relate everything to fantasy numbers and value.  

Summary:

Denver is Siberia, Kenny Thomas' fantasy numbers will go up or stay the same, James Posey's fantasy numbers will drop because he won't play as much and can't shoot.

'Tis the season to be stressed.
     
So who can blame Jazz coach Jerry Sloan if he had a concern or two heading into Utah's Sunday matinee with Memphis?
     
After all, as Sloan said, "Coaches worry about everything."
     
On this day, he fretted chiefly about a letdown after the Jazz's big win over NBA-leading Dallas on Friday night, and later about getting sucked in by sloppy play by the eight-win Grizzlies.
     
But with those two potential problems averted as Utah rolled easily and looked decent doing it in a 103-74 romp over Memphis at The Pyramid, Sloan's stress-meter skyrocketed with the thought of a much bigger worry that awaits: 7-foot-6 rookie center Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets, whom the Jazz visit tonight.
     
"We just have to try to execute, and try not to let him do the things that he does well," said Sloan, who got a sneak peek at Yao representing his native China at the FIBA World Championship tournament in Indianapolis last summer.
     
"We haven't played against (the Rockets), but we know they're very talented individually, and they're getting better and better all the time as a team because of what he presents," Sloan added. "I mean, he's not going to give you a lot of easy baskets inside."

Yao, as in wow.

The Hawks get two shots this season at 7-foot-5 Yao Ming, Houston's big fellow. The first test comes tonight in the Compaq Center. They see the Rockets again in three weeks.

The Hawks have dropped four straight, and they have Allen Iverson and Philadelphia at Philips Arena Saturday night. This is not merely a difficult stretch, but it could be ruinous for a team that is showing signs of a fragile psyche.