I agree that it's unfair to nerf paladins. Where we disagree is in the paladin being Junior Varsity. Part of the casters damage is really the paladin's damage. The caster made the save vs. the hold person and was able to cast a spell that round because of the paladin. The caster is still conscious because of the paladin. The problem is that the paladin's damage is also increased by the haste spell so part of the paladin's damage is the wizards. Both are harder to hitting better because of the cleric. And on and on and on and on.
To make matters even worse, the caster does less or more damage based on the paladin's decision. If the paladin decides to get in front of the caster and use Sentinal to stop the big bad ugly from crushing the wizard into dust, he has just increased the wizard's damage production. If he instead goes the other way leaving the wizard all alone, shortening the time the wizard stays up, he has decreased the wizards damage production.
Everyone is dipping and helping out to the point where it's simply not possible to isolate a single PC and compare to another PC to tell who is better. Well, you can, but you can't be correct because you're ignoring the huge number of variables