Since the Nets emerged as the frontrunner to land Melo I've naturally been wondering what players might be involved in a deal for Anthony. Though we've discussed deals here on DenverStiffs, the perspective on the Nets side of things is a little different, or should I say a lot different. I headed over to NetsDaily, the New Jersey Nets SB Nation blog last night to see what types of things were being said about their players and here is some of what I collected...

Players they're extremely high on:

Well, to be honest there isn't any player on their team they're not high on, even Johan Petro seems to be the next Tim Duncan to them. But from what I read their most valued assets appear to be (in order) Lopez, Favors, Harris, Terrence Williams and Troy Murphy. Obviously as we've already heard from heckling Nets fans, Lopez is off limits andI believe it. With Favors there it makes Lopez pretty much untouchable, but as long as they're willing to dish out one of their young front court duo members, that should be enough. I didn't find many comments on James. There was your occasional "he's going to be a stud" comment, but those frankly were reserved for their other young wingman, Terrence Williams. They seem to be extremely high on him and when it comes to trades feel he's just as good as any centerpiece the league has to offer. Clearly this is a bit of a stretch, but it's great news for us as we could likely get him at a low value for what he really is. Here are some of the comments regarding Williams...

"I would hate to lose T-Will."

"T-Will's a big time keeper."

"T-Will is more proven than Favors."

"Jerry Stackhouse said Williams is a true building block for this team."

How they feel about Anthony:

I was quite surprised by how accurately they viewed Anthony, considering how skewed their vision of their own players was. They, similar to us, interpret Anthony as a pure scorer, who possesses some of the most versatile offensive skills in the game. They acknowledge that although he has made the playoffs for seven consecutive years, he has only carried the Nuggets past the first round once. All in all those in favor of bringing in Melo were equally met by a similar amount of fans unwilling to bring him in if it meant giving up Favors. Currently the poll on thier blog shows about a 60 to 40 percent split in favor of just passing on Melo if in meant giving up Favors. This brings me to my next point, how they feel about the possible centerpiece in a trade being Favors.

Who they believe Favors will be:

Again, I was a bit shocked to see just how high up they were on a guy who had less than a stellar freshman year at GT, and still has a long way to go before he's a polished NBA product. It's hard to sum it up in words so I'll just let the quotes do it.

"Favors will be a player like Bill Russell.... If we trade him , it’s like throwing the car into reverse at 30 mph…….We are moving forward now…….let’s keep rolling on….."

"Favors.... will be a championship Franchise player……"

"I don't want to trade Favors. This could haunt us for ten years. NOPE."

Of course, my favorite, and the only rec'd comment in the entire thread...

"Best move is not to trade for Anthony."

Popular trade scenarios:

There were all kinds of different opinions on the combinations of players that should be involved from the Nets standpoint, but most of them seemed to include a mix of Favors, Murphy, Williams, James, Humphries andfirst round draft picks. I noticed that they are extremely unwilling to give up a lot, as any team would be, to obtain Melo and one prime example was proposed by AC24, who said that his "Max trade is James, Murphy, Hump and maybe a pick or two. If they decline, screw them". On the other hand there were, from our perspective at least, more fair trades proposed, yet many times they were met with criticism.

My personal opinion:

It seems foolish for the Nets, who just traded for NJ native Troy Murphy, to trade both their possible starting PFs away, yet it's definitely not out of the picture. All I have to say is the idea of Johan Petro possibly being your starting PF is a scary thought. So to me I think the most realistic package, that would benefit both teams equally, would be to trade Melo and a future 2nd rounder to the Nets for Favors, Williams, another insignificant piece to make salary work, as well as two future first rounders (one being the Warriors pick). Bottom line is that if Favors doesn't work out at least Williams looks like he will and if Favors does work out, there's still a very, very good chance he ends up not being close to as impactful as Meloon the floor. We likely will be a much worse team than NJ in the near future, so their first round pick andour second round pick should only be separated by 10-20 spots in the draft. So the Warriors pick is really what matters and even that is protected, as TChizza has mentioned before. This thing looks like it's going to be done within a week or two as reported by Chris Broussard this morning on ESPN. Let's just hope we can get a good deal for the man who has represented this franchise for the past 7 years and saved basketball in Denver as we know it.