"Nothing is going to change for the Lakers' Ron Artest

in Game 3 Friday night.

He'll still be missing.

But this time, he won't even be allowed in American

Airlines Center since the league suspended him for a game for swinging his arm

and striking J.J. Barea in the face with 24.4 seconds left in the game.

It was a boneheaded play by Artest. The silliness of it

alone should have been a suspendable offense, not to mention the fact that it

was a dirty play.

Anyway, the debate can begin now about whether it's a

good thing for the Mavericks or not. There's a decent chance that LA

coach Phil Jackson now moves Lamar Odom into the starting lineup.

Either that or noted Mav-punker Matt Barnes.

Either way, the Lakers will get stronger with their starting

lineup, at least based on what Artest was providing in the first two games. He

was a nonfactor, to say the least, and that's why Game 3 just got more intriguing.

The Lakers will have an even stronger bunker mentality now.

They will be shorthanded on top of being desperate. That's a bad combination

for any team facing it. You know Kobe Bryant is going to come out on fire and

the Mavericks still haven't seen much from Pau Gasol or Derek Fisher yet

in this series.

The bottom line is that it's possible the Lakers could

benefit from this."