rue. the. day.

you're familiar, i'm sure, with the concept of the "do-over." everyone figures it out pretty early on. you know, you're a lil kid playing a game with your friends and you make a mistake of some kind, like if you're playing kickball or something and you pop it up to the catcher, but you didn't really mean to do that at all. what you meant to do was kick it clear into the neighbor's yard two or three houses down so you call "do-over." if the friends you're playing with are understanding, they totally go along, because they know there'll be a time, maybe even that very day, when they'll want a do-over themselves.

the "real world" isn't like that, so i'm told anyway, which would seem to be pretty unfortunate for the little dallas mavericks who just yesterday made what'd seem to be their final move of the off-season. this is where i petition you for forgiveness for writing about sports, but i couldn't really think of anything else today, you know how it is. so i've been a mavericks fan for a long time, ever since i was like six years old, and in all that time the one thing that they've always seemed to have been missing is a top-flight big mean guy to plug up the middle. it would seem as though they've taken care of that, mostly because yesterday they made a pretty big trade to bring in erick dampier, who is ostensibly a big mean guy who'll plug up the middle.

this could turn out to be a brilliant move, but in order for it to be, pretty much everything has to come together this year, and i'm not certain how likely that is. dampier sucks, there's really no way around that. he's had two years in which his performance could be considered even slightly above average, his best year was a contract year after his team shipped off all the players they had that were better than him, and on top of all that, because of his age, his level of performance is more likely to decline than it is to get better, and for a guy whose career best is twelve points and twelve rebounds, that's not really terribly encouraging.

in fact, the whole thing sorta reminds me of whenever the rangers brought in chan ho park. the similarities are pretty startling, and if you have any idea just how much chan ho's absolutely sucked since he showed up in arlington, it's the kind of thing that might lead you to consider heading to downtown dallas, C4 in hand, for the express purpose of blowing up AAC simply so you won't have to live through dampier seeing if he can one-up park. is that extreme? maybe a lil, but that becomes less the case when you consider that when the rangers picked up park; they'd been hard up for a top-flight starting pitcher for quite some time, kinda like the the mavs were for a center; and when they had the resources to pick one up they went after the best guy in a lackluster field, paying minimum heed to the fact that one, based on dubious performance in previous seasons, there were some pretty serious questions about their guy's projected productivity and two, nobody else really seemed to want the guy. all the stuff that was true of park then is true of dampier now. in fairness to dampier, the knicks were trying work a trade for him, but they were offering the equivalent of giant steaming pile of crap, and atlanta had an offer on the table, but they'd offer me the league minimum if i told them i was available.

on the bright side though, the mavs actually have five guys starting who play five different positions, which is the first time that's happened since they had james donaldson around to play center, i suspect he could step into the gym tomorrow and give dampier a pretty serious run for the starting job, but that's neither here nor there i guess. anyway, if dampier can at least approach the numbers he put up last year, the lineup actually looks pretty dang good. in fact, the value brought to the team by dampier's arrival, it could be argued, isn't even brought by dampier himself, mostly because now that he's here, dirk is free to play his position and not wander around the lineup in search of mismatches. having gotten rid of a couple other guys also leaves no doubt as to the fact that the team is dirk's team now. like i was saying though, because he's 30 and pretty much without a solid track record, i figure that dampier's got a window of one year, maybe two, where he'll be able to help the team through his own tangible contributions. maybe even the best way to judge the trade won't be by how dampier does, what kinda numbers he puts up, as much as how his presence affects how dirk plays, that comforts me a bit, cause i definitely don't expect anything out of him.

maybe they won't rue the day, but i wouldn't count on him for much.

feeling: arg
thinking of: colonel sherman t. potter
music: "let me stand next to your fire" jimi hendrix