Adrian Wojnarowski talked about this earlier this week, but yesterday Nets beat writer Al Iannazzone also talked about how Derrick Favors growing pains may be affecting the team’s ability to land Carmelo Anthony. A proposed mega-deal would send Chris Paul to Portland, Devin Harris to New Orleans, Favors to Denver and Carmelo and Andre Miller to the Nets. However:
The Nuggets can’t justify trading Anthony for the raw, 19-year-old Favors at this point, which is one of the reasons the Nets wanted something done before the start of training camp and ultimately the preseason. Favors’ growing pains would be evident once the games began.
I still feel like this is a major misread by the media here about Carmelo’s value. Yes, it would be nice for Favors to show more ability out of the gate, but the Nuggets have an unhappy superstar that will walk away for nothing if he isn’t traded. Meanwhile, other teams, outside of the Nets, there are few reports of teams out there even making real strides to get Carmelo. Denver is either going to have to settle for something uncertain, or just not trade ‘Melo and deal with those consequences.
