New Jersey and Denver were moving from including Utah’s Andrei Kirilenko and Charlotte’s Boris Diaw in the trade packages, front-office sources said, and trying to find trade partners in both the Eastern and Western conferences. Denver and New Jersey were trying to line up new scenarios that still would result with Anthony in New Jersey and Derrick Favors and Nets draft picks in Denver, sources said.
The four-team trade fell apart when Denver kept trying to include more of its players in deals to spare themselves a bigger luxury-tax bill that would’ve come with the arrivals of Kirilenko and Favors, sources said. The proposed trade would have added $4.5 million in salary to their payroll plus another $4.5 million in luxury tax.
I understand the reluctance of the Nuggets to take on an additional $9 million in expenses as a byproduct of trading their best player away. It would seem like including a medium-sized contract (Chris Anderson, J.R. Smith) in the deal would solve that problem, though the Nets need to be the team absorbing that extra salary since it’s doubtful that the Jazz or Bobcats are going to want to take it on.
Four-team trades have a way of falling apart and the Nuggets aren’t doing anyone any favors by dragging their feet. I can’t really blame them, though. They’re just doing their due diligence and seeing if a) they can convince Carmelo to stay or b) they can get a better deal.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — if Carmelo starts the season with the Nuggets, it’s going to be awfully tough to trade him away when the team is sitting in the #3 or #4 spot on the West and Nugget fans are daydreaming about a deep run in the playoffs. With Amare Stoudemire and Carlos Boozer changing conferences, the Nuggets have a great chance to win 50+ games again, and that’s going to make it tough to trade away a superstar in the middle of the season.
