Haven’t we — and all the parties involved — been talking about this since last summer? If so, how can things be dragging out so slowly now?
But it is. Nothing has been quick or painless about the Carmelo Anthony trade situation. But now something is going to go down in the next week. It has to, there’s a deadline on Feb. 24. While there has been plenty of talk so far, finally the talks seem to have a real substance to them. Here is the roundup of where we are (as of Wednesday morning).
The Knicks and Nuggets have reached the parameters of a deal, according to Alan Hahn of Newsday.The Knicks are willing to part with Wilson Chandler or Danilo Gallinari and a source with knowledge of the situation said that including a Raymond Felton-Chauncey Billups swap would not be a deal-breaker.
The issue at hand is the precarious decision to complete a blockbuster deal that involves even more players, perhaps rookies Timofey Mozgov and Landry Fields, and dramatically jumbles the roster, the starting lineup and the rotation with 28 games left -- and very little time for practice -- after the Feb. 24 trade deadline.
I’m not sure why Denver would want Felton when they already have Ty Lawson, but that may be part of the problem — the Nuggets don’t know what they want and keep changing the trade. The moving goal line on a deal was a complaint when the four-team Nets deal was discussed and not much has changed, Adrian Wojnarowski, of Yahoo is saying.
“This is like the Nets talks all over again: Denver keeps moving the goal posts,” one league source said. “They don’t know what they want there.”
As the Daily News reported, the wild card is Knicks owner James Dolan and the looming possibility he could overrule his president and cut a deal with Denver himself. There are fears that Dolan is listening too much to former president and coach Isiah Thomas and possibly agents and representatives for Anthony who have agendas to undermine Walsh.
“Donnie isn’t going to make a one-sided deal and gut his team to get this done now,” said one league source who regularly speaks to Walsh. “He’ll end up with two unhappy stars because they have no supporting cast. But if Dolan gets more involved in this, he could really makes a mess of this.”
The other wild card is the Nets. Plenty of people around the league expect Denver and New Jersey to start talking again, and if a package based around Derrick Favors and the expiring deal of Troy Murphy is still on the table, they would just to the front of the pack again. As is pointed out at the Bergen Record, with All-Star weekend in Los Angeles all the key players will be in the same place, from Carmelo Anthony to Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov. People start talking and... who knows?
The idea that the Nuggets may not move Anthony and he would stay and consider an extension — which always felt like an effort to gain negotiating leverage more than reality — is dead Wojnarowski adds.
Nobody thinks this is getting done before the All-Star game. But come the couple days after, look for things to move fast. The Nuggets should — should! — want to leave themselves time to make another couple deals after the ‘Melo one. Then again, predicting what they want has been impossible for everyone so far.