The New Jersey Nets have emerged as the frontrunner for Carmelo Anthony’s services, according to ESPN…
Several league sources on Monday told ESPN.com that they believe the Nets have emerged as the front-runner to secure Anthony. Not only is Anthony willing to sign a contract extension with the Nets, sources say the club is willing to make an intriguing offer of Derrick Favors (the No. 3 pick in this year’s draft), the expiring contracts of Troy Murphy and Kris Humphries, and at least one future first-round pick to Denver to land Anthony.
A source close to the Nets told ESPN.com that he wasn’t ready to concede that the Nets were the front-runners for Anthony’s services, nor was the source willing to confirm what the Nets would offer. However, the source did acknowledge that New Jersey was in serious consideration based on the Nuggets’ reluctance to trade Anthony to a Western Conference team and the Nets’ combination of expiring contracts, draft picks and a young player with serious upside.
Hmm. This trade looks familiar, though the Nets don’t have to include Humphries in the deal (unless I’m missing some rule about the extend-and-trade). Favors is obviously the centerpiece, and he’d give the Nuggets and intriguing building block and running mate for Ty Lawson.
The report makes me wonder if the Knicks have offered Danilo Gallinari and Anthony Randolph (along with Eddy Curry’s contract) or if they are holding to the originally reported Gallinari/Curry deal. It seemed like the Nuggets weren’t too impressed with anything on the Knicks’ roster, so this Favors deal might be enough to get the Nuggets to pull the trigger. They’d get a young prospect, a draft pick, salary cap relief, and they’d trade Carmelo out of the conference. Not bad.
For the Nets, the trade would open a hole at power forward, but the team could move forward with a core of Melo, Brook Lopez, Devin Harris and Terrence Williams. I’m still confused by the team’s decision to invest $11 million per year in Travis Outlaw and Jordan Farmar when they could have used that cap space to sign someone like David Lee. I guess they were waiting on LeBron, like everyone else, and when he finally decided to ‘take his talents to South Beach,’ they scrambled to do the best they could with what was still out there. I don’t mind the Farmar signing so much, but the Outlaw deal leaves the Nets with zero cap flexibility going forward.
