Is This It?

Lousier hands than Damp? That’s not even possible.
No post game/footwork? When did Damp have any? At least Chandler’s shown somewhat of an ability to put the ball in the basket.

A low offensive IQ? The guy has shown that when he’s placed with a capable PG, he’s able to produce on the offensive end, something Damp never showed here.

We’re repeating ourselves here.

Let’s look at Chander and Damp’s rate stats from the last two years:

Chander ’08: 58 TS%, 5.1 Assist Rate, 16.1 TO rate, 9.9 Pts/36 min, 13.44 PER, .114 WS/48 min
Dampier ’08: 66 TS%, 15.6 Assist Rate, 15.0 TO rate, 8.9 Pts/36 min, 15.72 PER, .161 WS/48 min

Chandler ’09: 64 TS%, 4.4 Assist Rate, 24.9 TO rate, 10.3 Pts/36 min, 12.58 PER, .120 WS/48 min
Dampier: ’09: 64 TS%, 8.9 Assist Rate, 17.5 TO rate, 9.2 Pts/36 min, 14.05 PER, .140 WS/48 min

So, you have pretty much across the board superiority from Dampier. One thing that should be absolutely be known is that, whatever stigma we as Mavericks fans have put on Dampier as the stonehanded guy that couldn’t catch passes and would fumble the ball at will in the post…we’re going to get a guy with the same mark in Chandler. Whether it’s his hands, his focus, his lack of bulk, whatever the reason is irrelevant…Chandler is just as abysmal at handling the ball as Damp. It’s just a fact, and it’s plainly displayed in the awful showings he’s put on the record the last couple of years. His turnover rate last year, actually, was the worst rate of any player in the NBA to log at least 700 minutes. That’s dead last. Absolute worst. The bottom. Well behind super-clueless bigs like DeAndre Jordan, Hasheem Thabeet, Kwame Brown, and yes, even Erick Dampier. Now, I don’t expect him to be quite that bad next year, since that would be a little outside his established norms, but regardless, Chandler is an absolute turnover machine. Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking otherwise.

Another thing that immediately leaps out to me is that Dampier, while hardly Tim Duncan or Paul Gasol out there, is a pretty strong passer when compared to Chandler, who is in the running for either least able or least willing passer in the NBA. His assist rates are astonishingly bad, even when put side by side with other centers. A guy who is a non-entity in the scoring column should at least be able to occasionally find an open teammate. Chandler hasn’t posted an assist rate as high as Dampier’s ‘09 rate in four years, and has never posted an assist rate as high as Dampier’s ’08 rate.

Chandler has taken slightly more shots than Damp the last few years, and as a result has scored more points(though not as efficiently). It’s hard to see that as an advantage, considering Chandler was playing on teams practically devoid of alternative scoring threats, while Dampier was on a squad with shot-chuckers like Dirk, JET, Josh Howard, Caron Butler, etc. Will Chandler be more useful in pick and roll situations, however rarely those opportunities come about? Possibly. Athletically he is a level above Damp, and has a definite edge in quickness. The problem is, statistically, he’s more likely to turn the ball over than Damp, and less likely to make the shot than Damp assuming he doesn’t turn it over. Maybe here we should give Dampier some credit that, for all his flaws, he wasn’t constantly playing against himself by trying to do things he knew he wasn’t capable of.

And, of course, all this talk about Chandler’s offense belies Dampier’s true advantage, being his ability to rebound and block shots, both of which he did with more regularity the last two seasons.

On your other points, there were a total of 4 years in which he averaged really close to a double-double thus far in his career. The problems with injuries have been a serious concern, but he hasn’t been this healthy since his career year in NO.

As I’ve said repeatedly, your idea of what Chandler is seems to be a little out of date. This will be his 10th season in the NBA coming up, and he’s coming off two injury plagued seasons. Time and prolonged poor health have a debilitating effect, and it can’t be assumed that it will simply go away, instead of piling on, building like a snowball down a hill.

What reason do you have to believe he’s healthy at all, let alone as healthy as he was in New Orleans three years ago? I think every athlete is going to say it, but in my experience more often than not that is rhetoric from the Crash Davis school of interviewing.

Chandler’s still pretty damn good and an obvious upgrade over Damp.

Believe that if you so wish, but understand that basically all the empirical data from the last two years flies in the face of your argument. You seem to have this faith that he’ll hop in a time machine and go back to 2007, but why? And, even so, most of what he was able to do in New Orleans was built around personnel the Mavericks don’t have and can’t replicate(namely, a bunch of jumpshooters to open the middle, and Chris Paul to relentlessly attack the basket). Remember also that before Chandler go to the Hornets, he was the #2 pick that had underwhelmed his way out of Chicago and was traded straight up for P.J Brown and pariah J.R Smith.

As a backup(and, hopefully, eventual trade bait), I think Chandler is very solid and should do fine. I’d just like the noise on the Damp-Chandler debate to settle and some reasoned standards to be established, lest we repeat this cycle of getting centers thinking they’re going to be something and then hating them when our unfair expectations are not met.