Evan Eschmeyer calls himself a ?slow starter.?? So far ? as Mavs staffers intimate that the new center is slipping completely out of the rotation -- he?s only half right.
     In three of Dallas? eight preseason games, Eschmeyer appeared for three minutes, zero minutes and in the Tuesday tune-up win over Orlando, zero minutes again. Esch might be slow, but he?s not even close to being the part-time starter the club envisioned him to be.
     ?He?s not in the doghouse,?? assistant coach Donnie Nelson says. ?But he is kind of the backup-backup-backup center.??
     Wow. What is going on here?
     ?I?m not a guy who jumps out of the gym, or a guy whose skills jump out at you,?? Eschmeyer says. ?It might take two or three weeks for me to show what I can do. I?ll do the little things to help this team win.??
     Fair enough. But other people are now being given the chance to do those things, and Eschmeyer has essentially been relegated to somewhere so far down the bench that one Mavs assistant says Donnell Harvey is above him, that Harvey is ?the No. 10 guy with a bullet.??
     This is not what the Mavs bargained for when they signed the ex-Net to a six-year, $19 million deal. Nor is is what Eschmeyer bargained for after banging his way to at least 18 minutes in 41 New Jersey games last year as a part-time starter.
     Let?s examine the at-least-temporary demise of Eschmeyer: