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KG I haven't gotten the opportunity to see Detroit play yet this year. They do appear to be doing very well as a team defensively from looking at the box scores though. And I would agree that Ben is probably the only very good defender on the team. However I would be willing to be that the rest of the team is probably playing good team D and making their rotations for the most part. If the Mavs could learn to play good team D then they could take more advantage of a great lowpost defender. However, without the rotations being there on defense, the team will be vunerable when the post defender leaves his man to help on D. Still Ben or any other premier defender would definitely make improvements to the Mavs defense. But would it be enough to make up for what we would have to give up to get them? Without the Mavs learning to play better team D I would say no.
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I guess my point was that teams somehow tend to play better team defense when they have a great individual defender (or two or three) in the mix. Sure, the rest of the Mavericks have to make good defensive rotations and play good team defense. But Wallace would certainly make that proposition a lot easier. Wallace is a mixture of Bradley's shotblocking with tremendous athleticism, strength, and quickness. Wallace would be the great eraser. Everybody plays better defense knowing they have a player like that behind them. Heck, that's why the Mavericks play their best defense with Bradley in the middle, even though he's not on Wallace's level defensively.
Your initial argument was that Wallace really wouldn't improve the team substantially on defense. I think that's just incorrect. On the other hand, the question of how in the world Wallace could be acquired is a legitimate one. I don't think there's any way Joe Dumars would give up Wallace unless Nowitzki was in the return package.