Anybody remember this.....?

The deal would have sent Howard, small forward Hedo Turkoglu and point guard Chris Duhon to the Nets; Blazers small forward Gerald Wallace, Nets centers Brook Lopez and Johan Petro, and possibly a first-round draft pick to the Magic; and a whopping four first-round draft picks to the Blazers.

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/sam_amick/12/14/dwight.howard.trade/index.html#ixzz1wTWyGhPG

This my friends is the one of original packages put together to bring Dwight Howard to the Nets that fell apart back in December. While all of Netsdaily is freaking out about how horrible the trade was for Gerald Wallace now that we don't have a 1st round draft pick this year. Let's take a look at what really happened. Blazers were going to agree to send Wallace to the Magic in order to help facilitate this trade with us and in return they would receive 4 first round draft picks. At the trade deadline Billy made a trade to acquire Wallace for ONE top three protected draft pick and also dumped some bad contracts in the process. Yet some people are still calling this a bad trade.

Gerald Wallace could have opted out of his final year with the Blazers and signed with a team who was unwilling to trade him and Billy would've had to start over from scratch. Instead, the Nets arguably have the best chance to sign him and have the final say in whether he stays or goes once the ink dries up. Since the pick was top three protected, if we had landed a top three pick this year many believe that we could have used it to trade for Dwight with Brook and if it was the first pick then we keep Brook. Understand that the Gerald Wallace trade was not horrible at all, in fact it was pure genius.

Dwight may have opted into the final year of his contract but the rumors of him wanting out of Orlando and playing in Brooklyn have not gone away. The Nets have the same package to offer Orlando should trade talks open up again. The biggest difference now is that we won't have the same cap space that we did before in order to take on Turkoglu and Duhon after we sign free agents this summer.

But let's look at who the rumored targets for free agency have been so far. Andrei Kirelenko is a versatile player who can defend both the SF and PF position. Hmmm... That sounds alot like Gerald Wallace to me. So why would we pursue him if we have Wallace in the fold looking to extend him. My guess is in case they decide to trade him for Dwight.

Another rumored FA target is Ersan Illyasova, a stretch four who can rebound. Who does that sound like? The former Net ,Ryan Anderson. He was a great compliment to Dwight this past season and who would fit in quite nicely next to Dwight in a Brooklyn uniform.

Now understand that I am not saying all of this to continue the conspiracy theory that Dwight will in fact end up in a Net uniform (okay, maybe i am just a little bit). But what I am trying to say is that it is obvious that Billy is keeping his options open if indeed Dwight becomes available once again. The free agents we sign will have contracts that will match up nicely for a deal with Orlando. And if we don't get Dwight then we should still have a very competitive core of players to open up the Barclays Center with. I can almost guarantee that if we gave up 4 draft picks for Dwight no one would have complained. So before you call for Billy's head because we lost out on ONE in order to keep our package intact think about the other 3 picks that we saved in the process of doing so.