Dwight Howard Trade Rumors: Dealing for Howard Imperative for Nets

Now that the NBA's All-Star Weekend is a thing of the past, the focus concerning the Association switches to the league's March 15th trade deadline.

Specifically, the focus is on Orlando Magic superstar Dwight Howard. If he's going to be traded, now's the time.

Sam Amick of Sports Illustrated offered an in-depth update on the Howard situation on Monday. The situation is as simple as ever, yet also more complicated than you may think.

On the one hand, Amick's sources tell him that Howard's top choices remain the same. His wish list still includes the New Jersey Nets, Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks, with the Nets being Howard's favorite. By far, apparently.

Howard's reasoning extends beyond mere basketball concerns:

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Though it may pain the purists, it's not just about basketball for Howard. He wants to take his brand global, to leverage the international influence of Russian owner Mikhail Prokhorov while building his brand as Brooklyn's first star. His wandering eye is enticed not only by the Barclays Center that is set to open next season, but the businesses in the booming area around it that could afford many off-court opportunities. He wants, as one source said, to "be Kobe Bryant, not be with Kobe Bryant."

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Of course, the Nets had a deal in place to acquire Howard in December, but Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports reported that Orlando's ownership stepped in and nixed the deal.

That deal included the Portland Trail Blazers and it featured a handful of players and draft picks changing places. Since the Nets are relatively short on tradeable assets, it would likely take a similar deal to acquire Howard at the trade deadline.

The Nets could wait until the offseason to sign Howard, who can opt out of his contract at the end of the season, as a free agent. However, they have plenty of incentive to deal for him.

Above all, the Nets don't want to run the risk of not making a deal for Howard and then watching him have a change of heart and re-up with Orlando. It's been widely reported that the Magic are holding out hope that Howard will decide to stay in Orlando, and they may just get their wish if the team goes to the playoffs and enjoys some success.

It's true that the Nets are too much of a lost cause to even consider making the playoffs this season. Even if they do trade for Howard, they're not going to go from a 10-25 team to a postseason team. A Howard acquisition would not pay off right away.

The Nets could risk it and wait to sign Howard as a free agent, but they should want to trade for him so he can play alongside Deron Williams for a month or so until the end of the season. The best-case scenario for the Nets involves keeping both of them and in the case of Williams, it sounds like he needs to know he's going to be playing with Howard in order to stay.

"Williams is waiting and watching the Howard saga like the rest of us, his future also depending on the outcome," writes Amick.

Signing Howard only to lose Williams wouldn't hurt the Nets from a business standpoint, but it would be a disaster from a basketball standpoint. Having Williams and Howard would make the Nets a serious contender in the Eastern Conference. Having just Howard would make the Nets no better than the Magic, and probably worse.

The Nets are going to be rolling the dice with their future no matter what they do, but making a deal for Howard so he and Williams can play together until the end of the season is by far the safest play the Nets can make. If they want to have Howard and Williams around for the foreseeable future, that's the way to go about it.

As easy as all of this is to say, it's going to be extremely difficult for Nets GM Billy King to make it happen. He has just a little over two weeks to figure it out.