Effects of Carmelo deal won’t be felt until ’12

The Nuggets are nearing a three-team deal that would send Carmelo Anthony to New Jersey. (Rocky Widner/NBAE via Getty Images)

We are, mercifully (and hopefully), nearing the end of the Carmelo Anthony madness. The Nuggets, Nets and Pistons are moving toward an agreement on a trade that would involve 15 (or possibly more) players and send Anthony to the Nets, along with Chauncey Billups and Richard Hamilton.

Multiple reports claim this bad boy is close to being finalized, though both the New York Post and The Record of Bergen County, N.J., reported Monday morning that the Nuggets are experiencing some slightly chilly feet. According to ESPN.com’s Chris Broussard, the biggest stumbling block now is Al Harrington. Denver wants to add him to its list of players headed to New Jersey, but the Nets are reluctant to acquire him because of the four years and $28 million remaining on his deal.

But before we start judging this thing, let’s be clear about a couple of unknowns:

• It’s unclear exactly how many draft picks the Nets are surrendering here. Almost every report has the Nuggets receiving two first-rounders, and SI.com’s Chris Mannix reported that the Pistons are believed to be seeking a first-rounder but might have to settle for a second-rounder for their role in facilitating the trade.

• Which picks are involved is important. The Nets are flush with first-rounders, having picked up two in the transactions that made up the Terence Williams/Sasha Vujacic/Joe Smith deal in December. They also have their own first-rounders, and their 2011 first-round pick is likely more valuable than the picks they nabbed from Houston and the Lakers, considering New Jersey is a cinch to make the lottery. In addition, the Nets own Golden State’s 2012 first-rounder, which has more limited protections than some of their other picks, meaning it is also one of the key prizes here.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the analysis. The first question to ask is: Why are the Nets and Nuggets even bothering to involve Detroit here, since a two-team trade of Derrick Favors/Troy Murphy/Devin Harris for Anthony and Billups works just fine? There are two answers for this:

1) The Nets actually may want Hamilton, who is owed $12.5 million next season and at least $9 million for 2012-13 — a deal the Pistons are eager to shed. The Nets seem to believe Hamilton’s presence would make Anthony more comfortable agreeing to an extension in New Jersey — a line of thinking Anthony’s agent, Leon Rose (who also reps Hamilton), is likely echoing in conversations with Jersey officials.

2) The Nuggets save more money this way. If the Nets want both Billups and Anthony (earning $30.3 million combined this season), they have to send out enough salary to make the deal work. That means including both Harris and Murphy. But having another team around to swallow Murphy’s expiring deal means Denver doesn’t have to absorb as much salary.

Most reports have the Nuggets taking on $19.7 million in salary tied to Harris, Favors, Ben Uzoh, Stephen Graham, Anthony Morrow (a nice get if Denver can pull it off, by the way) and Quinton Ross. If those reports prove accurate, the Nuggets will save about $11 million in payroll for this season — not quite enough to get them under the luxury-tax line, but enough to get them close. They might be able to trim even more by unloading Harris, perhaps to Portland or Dallas.

Detroit is in this simply for the long-term salary relief that comes with dumping Hamilton, and if it snags a first-rounder in the process, we should all applaud Joe Dumars.

And what of the Nets? Most reports indicate they will get this deal done without surrendering four or five first-rounders — a prohibitive price that Mannix insisted Friday the Nets would not pay in a Carmelo deal. That’s good for Jersey.

But this deal still strikes me as underwhelming, in part because it would appear to put New Jersey in a holding pattern until at least the summer of 2013 and in part because Anthony is not a culture-changing, two-way player in the mold of Kevin Garnett. Yes, the Nets followed the Celtics’ strategy to acquire a franchise player — pile up attractive but unproven assets and deal them for a star. But the star they’re getting doesn’t play defense or move the ball like KG, and he doesn’t come in right behind another star playing prime-level ball (Ray Allen).

Replacing Graham and Travis Outlaw in the starting lineup with Hamilton and Billups is obviously an upgrade, but Billups is 34 and Hamilton is about to turn 33, and these guys are not going to turn New Jersey into a relevant contender this season or next — especially given that Brook Lopez can’t be counted on to grab a half-dozen rebounds a game right now. Hamilton won’t become an expiring contract until the 2012-13 season, when he’s due at least $9 million, while the Nets can either buy out Billups after this season for $3.7 million (or sooner) or use him as an expiring $14.2 million trade chip next season.

Either way, the Nets aren’t going to have the cap room to do anything big this offseason. It’s the next offseason the Nets are worried about, since that’s when some pretty big names — headlined by Chris Paul and Dwight Howard — can hit the free-agent market. The Nets reportedly have targeted Paul, another Rose client, according to Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski and others. If the essentials of this trade go down as reported, the Nets will have the following salaries committed to the 2012-13 season:

• Carmelo Anthony (approximately $20 million, probably more)

• Travis Outlaw ($7 million)

• Jordan Farmar ($4.25 million player option)

• Rip Hamilton ($12.5 million, with $9 million guaranteed until July 1, 2012)

That’s $43.75 million, and you’ll notice Lopez’s name isn’t there. His rookie deal expires after next season, meaning the Nets will have to work out a contract extension for Lopez that figures to cost in the neighborhood of $10 million per season given a collective bargaining landscape that resembles the one we’ve got now — a huge assumption, I know. (Note: If Lopez keeps playing like this, his future in New Jersey might not be so certain.) This list also doesn’t include rookie salaries for guys the Nets draft in the next two years.

In other words: It’s not a cinch the Nets will have mammoth cap room to throw at Paul. Nor are they set to have a particularly dynamic roster when Paul will be debating suitors. They will have time between now and then to hit a couple of home runs in the draft and on the trade market, and they’ll have some interesting assets (such as Billups’ expiring deal) to dangle.

But even with the first-rounders involved cut from four or five to three (or even two), this deal is not a home run for New Jersey. It’s giving up at least two first-rounders of an unknown quality plus the third pick in the 2010 draft — a 19-year-old drafted in a slot that produces, on average, a Jerry Stackhouse-level career. And Harris, by the way, is only a year older than Anthony and on a pretty affordable deal.

We don’t know the end game here. Maybe the management team Anthony and Paul share has offered the Nets a wink-wink assurance — no matter how tenuous — that Paul will sign with the Nets if Carmelo is there, regardless of what flotsam makes up the rest of the New Jersey roster in 2012. Maybe New Jersey has a deal in its back pocket for Billups. The ripples of this deal will be spreading for a while, and until they reach the metaphorical shore, we won’t be able to render a final judgment.

But given what we know now, this deal does very little to shake up the big picture in the NBA — other than robbing us of the possibility of seeing a motivated and complete Nuggets team really go for it this spring.