[madape]

That was more of a comment on how good the Mavericks really are. The truth is that we DON'T know how good this team truly is. I think that getting blown out by Orlando and getting pushed to overtime by Golden State doesn't prove to me that we are the second best team in the league, as Male23Dan suggested.

I'm not going to pin it all on Dampier. I'm just as concerned about the chemistry issue of Nash being gone as I am about Dampier. But clearly the stats show that we'd be a much better team without Erick Dampier. He's had the worst impact of any player on the Mavericks in terms of team success, and the margin between him and the second worst player isn't even close. I still think that over the course of the season Dampier will average no better than 10 points, 8 boards. But those aren't the stats that we should be focusing on. What we should be focusing on is how well the Mavericks play with Damp in the game. In the first five games of the season at least, we've stunk.

Even when Damp had his 18 board game the Grizzlies opened up a huge lead on us until Nelson yanked him (and I apologize for not posting after that game, I rarely frequent d-m.com on the weekends).

The real story of this season thus far is how the second team has been able to climb it's way out of the hole the first team has dug them. Dampier has been above all other players the reason we fallen into those holes. Bradley above all other players has been the reason we've been able to climb out.