Nah, SA is West of Houston as well and they have Nazr and if you include Duncan at the center position, Dampier slips yet anotehr spot (not to mention that there are a couple good centers in Denver, Phoenix if you include Amare). What WAS he thinking??
After the nice "Dampier Sucks" chants at the TC, I bet he wishes he was back in GS and would have never opened his big mouth.
What's funny is that even Mavs fans don't even believe that Damp is better than Yao. Maybe some did before the series. But that's not what they are saying now. It's pretty much reverted to a "Damp can slow Yao down and/or get him in foul trouble" type argument. As opposed to "Damp will show Yao's who's the best...blah, blah, blah..."
I dunno...is Seattle further west? We know Jerome James is better than Dampier (btw, you don't pronounce the "R" at the end of his name anymore...you prounce it French-like).
Mutombo has been average until the last game. If he can grab 10 rebounds and register 4 blocks in 18 minutes every time he can play the 4 qtr everytime, but he can't. The Rockets offense looks good when Mutombo is having a monster game, but is sluggish when he is not, which has pretty much been the case in this series. On the other hand, Yao gets no credit for shutting down Dampier and sometimes Dirk(not only does he block Dirk's driving but also make Dirk play post defense). Yao takes the whole Dallas frontcourt into foul rouble. Yao commands huge attention even when he's not scoring much. Yao's pick and roll with T-Mac is deadly. Yao has impacts that Mutombo can't duplicate that doesn't show up on the stats. Also, some of the fouls are because his teammates can't defend penetration. The Dallas offense is geared to driving at Yao and getting him in foul trouble. I don't think the Rockets have done a good job protecting Yao in this series, they either let their man go past them or sometimes let Yao pick up the foul instead of themselves (Padgett should take notes on this). If you subtract those fouls Yao would be able to stay on the court more and have better performances. Yao has been inconsistent and part of the blame is on him, but without him we would've been swept. Take game 1 as example, Yao played less minutes than Mutombo but still outplayed him.
