Dwight downplays Tuesday's incident with Kobe, who calls him 'a teddy bear'

Dwight Howard and Kobe Bryant don't see what the big deal is about their matching technical fouls from the season's opening night on Tuesday.

In the fourth quarter of the Houston Rockets' blowout victory, Howard caught Bryant with an elbow as his former teammate tried to reach in for a rebound. It was actually Bryant who ended up earning a Flagrant Foul-Penalty 1, and each player received a technical foul for jawing afterward.

Following the game, Howard cared only about the victory, though his comments certainly make it seem as if the whole incident found its way under his skin some:

What do y'all want me to say? I’m not going to give y'all nothing. That’s stupid.
...
We won the game. It’s over with. There’s no need to go in to it. We won the game. It’s about basketball. I mean, it’s over with. It’s nothing. I’m not even focused on it.

Bryant went so far as to use the scuffle as a rallying cry for the old school, for which he is now firmly the league's headmaster. Elbows? Technicals? Trash talk? Bring it on.

Bring on the passive aggressive descriptors about Howard, too:

I think it's fantastic. Elbows are part of the game. Trash-talking is part of the game. I don't know where the NBA became so sensitive.
...
He's a teddy bear. You can't help but like him. I really mean that. He's a really nice kid. But when you're competing and you have a goal in mind . . . certain times we don't see eye to eye.

Calling Howard a teddy bear and using the word kid are probably great ways to get in his head. Even from the deepest recesses of Howard's mind, though, the Lakers wouldn't be able to hang with the Rockets, so who will really have the last laugh here?