After last night’s home loss to the Atlanta Hawks, the Nets fell to deplorable 2-8 on the season. The Nets are the third worst scoring team (85.5 PPG) and and give up the eighth most points (96.7 PPG). The Nets are led by an increasingly uninterested, free agent-to-be, Deron Williams and Kris ‘Kardashian’ Humphries, who has his share of non-basketball related issues. Center Brook Lopez broke his foot during the regular season and is months away from returning to action.

A season filled with a lot of hope, Dwight Howard dreams, and their Brooklyn bound move, has turned into a cluster-you-know-what of a situation. Forget about Dwight Howard wearing a Net uniform, prepare to lose both Williams and Humphries to free agency. MarShon Brooks has been a nice surprise, but does Net ownership want him to be their cornerstone as they move into Brooklyn?

Things aren’t going to get easier for the Nets. They start a four-game road trip in Denver on Wednesday. They will make stops in Phoenix, Utah, and Los Angeles before coming home. Things just got a whole lot more difficult for the Nets.

After being spurned by Carmelo Anthony, the Nets wasted little time, trading for All-Star point guard, Deron Williams. The Nets will send rookie forward, Derrick Favors, point guard Devin Harris, and two first round picks to Utah. Williams, who was a member of the Utah Jazz for the last six seasons, is averaging 21.3 points per game and 9.7 assists per game.

Some outlets are reporting that Williams is completely unhappy with the trade and will not sign an extension in the future. Williams has two years remaining on his contract and has implied that he would like to join Amare and Carmelo in the Garden.

It’s not surprising to see Williams get dealt after his altercation with head coach, Jerry Sloan two weeks ago. Sloan is apparently going to return to the bench next season so the deal makes sense.

After his meeting with Carmelo Anthony on Saturday night in Los Angeles, Nets owner Mikhali Prokorov said,

“I think we made a very good tactical decision to force [the] Knicks to pay as much as they can,” Prokhorov told CNBC.com. “So it’s very good, it’s very interesting, it’s very competitive.”

If that doesn’t scream, ‘We Lost’, then I don’t know what does.

In addition to Prokorov comments, a source stated that the Knicks will not budge on their offer for Anthony. Thankfully, we only have to endure four more days of this before the deadline.

One key piece that I think a lot of Knick fans fail to realize is the Collective Bargaining Agreement in the NBA expires on June 30th. We’ve already begun to see how labor uncertainty is impacting the NFL and prospective free agents. The owners have been demanding larger revenue shares with numerous modifications to the current agreement. In the NBA, there have been rumblings that the owners want to institute a franchise tag similar to the one used by the NFL. A franchise tag is device that a team can use to retain a player who is set to hit free agency. The team promises to pay that player 120% of his prior year salary for one season only.

If the owners get their wish and the Nuggets do not trade Carmelo Anthony before Thursday, they can slap the franchise tag on him for 2012. This fact alone gives the Nuggets a lot of leverage in their negotiations with any prospective Carmelo suitor. Granted, it won’t be a huge benefit for the Nuggets to keep a disgruntled Carmelo in Denver for another season, but it also proves that they shouldn’t accept less than a king’s ransom for him.

The Knicks have less than 96 hours to make a deal before labor uncertainty has the final say on Carmelo’s future.

Is the Melo-Drama almost over?

A source is reporting that the 17-40 Nets and the Nuggets have reached a tenative agreement on a multiple-player deal involving Carmelo Anthony. According to the report, the following players will be swapped:

The Nets receive: Anthony, Chauncey Billups, Sheldon Williams, Melvin Ely, and Renaldo Balkman

The Nuggets receive: Derrick Favors, Devin Harris, Troy Murphy, Ben Uzoh, and four future first round draft picks.

The deal is contingent upon Anthony agreeing to a three-year, $65 million extension with the Nets. Owner Mikhail Prokhorov and minor owner, Jay-Z will sit down with Anthony during All-Star weekend this weekend in LA in an attempt to persuade Anthony to sign off on the contract. If Anthony signs the extension, the Nets will start this lineup on a nightly basis:

PG- Chauncey Billups
SG- Anthony Morrow
SF- Travis Outlaw
PF- Carmelo Anthony
C- Brook Lopez

Anthony has already spurned the Nets once and I can definitely see him doing it again. The Nets are giving up an absolute haul for Anthony, so it’ll be interesting to see how this situation plays out in the coming days.

Do you think Carmelo will sign the extension to play for New Jersey?

As mentioned right here last week, Carmelo Anthony and the Nets simply just were not a good fit. That notion was confirmed last night as we learned late that the Nets had pulled out of the Anthony sweepstakes.

Due to the Nuggets indecision on moving their star forward, this trade simply fell through the cracks. The Nets and Nuggets may look into this trade at another time, but for now, it’s dead.

Ultimately, I couldn’t envision Anthony coming to the Nets. Sometimes, fans will just have a hunch about a player and to me, he wasn’t a Net. There’s no point of him going to a single-digit win team when he’s already on a Western Conference playoff squad. If he wanted to be a Net, he would have hounded management to get the deal done and that just didn’t happen.

Maybe the Nuggets and Nets will re-open talks down the road, but for now, Anthony has made the right decision.

By now, you’ve heard that the New Jersey Nets are firmly engaged in a four-team deal that would bring perennial All-Star small forward, Carmelo Anthony to the Garden State. The Nets, Bobcats, Jazz, and Nuggets are engaged in a very complicated deal that would send Anthony and Charlotte guard DJ Augustin to New Jersey. The Nets would distribute first-round pick, Derrick Favors and a 2011 first round pick to Denver while point guard Devin Harris would go to Charlotte. The deal would only go through if Anthony, who is set to become a free agent next summer, agrees to an extension with the Nets.

Word of advice to Melo: Don’ t do it.

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Well, the Nets lost out on the big-time free-agents. However, a new era of Net basketball will start on Thursday afternoon. Ex-Philadelphia 76ers General Manager, Billy King, will assume Rod Thorne’s vacated executive role with the team.

King was the Sixers’ GM from 1997-2007. He led the Sixers to the NBA Finals in 2001. King had a very close relationship with Allen Iverson and sources say King may bring Iverson aboard.

However, with the recent signing of point guard, Jordan Farmer, the Iverson rumors aren’t as strong. Farmer, who averaged 7.2 PPG and 1.5 APG with the Lakers last season, will back-up Devin Harris at point guard. Given Harris’ injury troubles, Farmar will likely see an expanded role with the Nets.

The Nets concluded their busy week by agreeing to a sign-and-trade with the Golden State Warriors for Anthony Morrow. The Nets inked morrow to a three-year, $12 million dollar contract and sent a second round pick back to Golden State. Morrow averaged 13 points per game last year and nailed 46% of his three-pointers.  Morrow led the NBA in 2008 with his efficient three-point shooting.

The New Jersey Nets made their first free agent signing today. Unfortunately, his name isn’t LeBron. The Nets and forward, Travis Outlaw agreed to a five-year, $35 million dollar contract today.

Outlaw played only 34 games with the Clippers and Blazers last season, averaging nine points and four rebounds.

So far, the Nets have struck out on every big-time free agent. Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, Amar’e Stoudemire, Rudy Gay, and Carlos Boozer have all signed elsewhere. Assuming LeBron signs elsewhere, the Nets will have $25 million left over. The Nets will need to examine the trade market.

In roughly twelve hours, we’ll know where LeBron James will be playing basketball next season. There have been endless rumors flying around about him house hunting, having lunch with other players, etc. But let’s just cut through all of the clutter and look at the facts. LeBron values only two things…

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