And, more than that, the Nets may be making it impossible for themselves to have Howard and D-Will at the same time.
Guys, Howard asked to be traded to the Nets last year. They told him, apparently, that they'd trade him to the Lakers and he signed an option, a move he is now calling "blackmail" which is a pretty insane thing for a guy who is trying to force his team to trade him to the one team he wants to go to, to say.
I don't see how it happens, though. Dwight is making 19.2 mil, next year, Andrew Bynum is making 16.4 and Brook Lopez is making 4.1. So unlike a Dwight for Bynum trade, a Dwight for Lopez trade would require 15 mil in matching salary to be found somewhere, which is hilarious enough because if you go to hoopshype team salaries page, the Nets currently have 17 million worth of salaries. And let me tell you, Johan Petro isn't going to get it done.
That's not to say it's impossible, with a three or four team trade. But the second problem is that if the Nets somehow get Joe Johnson's 20 million dollar contract, which they couldn't trade for a while, now that they've signed Wallace for 10 mil a year, if they sign Deron for 17 mil a year, they suddenly are in even worse shape than the Mavericks to make a free agent bid for Dwight next year, as things currently stand.
The most ridiculous thing about all this, other than the fact that someone could be so self-absorbed that they don't even notice how much they are peeing on their own reputation and legacy, is that Dwight could have just stayed quiet last year, or taken whatever trade the Magic were going to force on him if he didn't re-up, and in EITHER CASE be an FA RIGHT NOW. AND there is no power on Earth that can stop him from being an FA at the end of this year, no matter what the Magic do.
So let's not get over-excited here. Player A demanding Team B does not mean Player A will be on Team B. We don't know how the new Magic front office will react, or whether they will play it as tough with Dwight, but they have no incentive to ship him where he wants to go and probably a lot of inclination, at this point, to trade him to Turkish Besitkas.