Editor's note: As part of "The Stein Line" every Monday, ESPN.com senior NBA writer Marc Stein takes you around the league for the latest news in "Coast to Coast."

The questions were posed to Chris Webber with Sacramento in the midst of piling its routs over the Nets and Mavericks onto their Christmas Day victory in L.A.

Won't this get boring, Chris?

	Chris Webber, right, and the Kings haven't had much of a reason to smile lately.

Won't it be hard to stay focused for 40 more games when the big regular-season games are this easy?

"All I have to do," Webber told us, "is say Game 7 and guys want to fight each other in the locker room."

Memo to Webb: It might be time for the Game 7 speech. For it looks as though the Kings -- getting no push from the Lakers or anyone else lately when it matters -- have become a little Laker-ish. The Lakers of the last couple seasons, mind you.

Sacramento is snoozing, in other words. Since swamping the Nets in Jersey by 36 points on Jan. 9, the Kings are 5-4 ... with back-to-back losses in Atlanta and Toronto over the weekend. Sacramento is 2-4 on the road in that span, with the wins coming at Golden State and Memphis.

Having won two games in Dallas in the second round last spring, the Kings don't figure to get too worked up about homecourt advantage. But they can't argue that it's better to have homecourt than not have it, and Dallas -- sputtering itself lately -- still has a three-game lead over Sacto.

Meanwhile, over at the West's other division leader ...
If not for a programming change Friday, which took Mavericks at Knicks off the ESPN schedule, Dallas would have played five consecutive games on national televison by the time it sees Minnesota at home this Thursday.

Instead, it's four games on national TV in a span of eight days and that's plenty for the Mavs in their present state, which isn't something they're in a rush to advertise. They started sliding with an inexplicably meek effort Jan. 15 at Arco Arena, followed by a fall-from-ahead loss at Phoenix, followed by a team meeting called by Michael Finley and then another loss in Seattle.

Wins in Philadelphia and New York offered only a temporary respite. Portland came to Dallas on Super Bowl Sunday, with the ESPN cameras rolling, and overpowered the hosts in the second half with physicality at both ends. And without Rasheed Wallace.

Guard Nick Van Exel, asked if it tweaks the Mavs that so much focused is placed on their nine losses -- compared to 3X victories -- said he'd be asking the same questions. "It's justifiable," Van Exel said.

Yet Van Exel insists that the loss to the Lakers on Dec. 6, after punting away a 30-point lead at Staples Center, was still the harder loss to shake off, no matter how severe the Sacramento hangover seems.

"Definitely the L.A. game," Van Exel said. "In Sacramento, we just didn't show up to play defense. We play them three more times."

News flash: Yao just might be a little weary
If you're wondering whether Yao Ming has finally careened into the Great Rookie Wall, stop wondering. Of course he's tired, considering Yao hasn't had much time away from basketball in this, well, millennium.

Yao didn't just spend all of last summer training for the World Championships in Indianapolis. The summer before, he was seen in Dallas with the Chinese national team prepping for the Asian Championships and World University Games. The summer before that was the Olympic Games of 2000.

So if anyone needs an All-Star break, it's clearly Yao, who'll instead be subjected to even more worldwide scrutiny in Atlanta than seen during his recent duel with Shaquille O'Neal.

Yao's averages over the past nine games -- a span which included a knee injury -- are a very mortal 9.0 points and 6.9 rebounds on 40 percent shooting. An 0-4 slide, meanwhile, has dragged the Rockets into the eighth spot in the West, four games ahead of the 19-23 Lakers.

The consolation: Yao has already helped Houston to two victories over L.A. in two tries, one home and one away. The wins could amazingly wind up serving as Houston's tiebreaker insurance, if the Lakers really are what they've been for 42 games and can't do more than try to sneak into the playoffs as a No. 8 seed.

The Lakers, too, could do with flipping the mythical switch. Assuming, again, they still have such capabilities and/or privileges.

Marc Stein is the senior NBA writer for ESPN.com. To e-mail him, click here. Also, send Stein a question for possible use on ESPNEWS.