Mikhail Prokhorov and Leon Rose walk into a bar…

…whom would you buy a drink first?

The Nets owner and agent of Richard Hamilton and Carmelo Anthony are working so hard to make this deal happen, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports opened his latest piece with a joyfully optimistic paragraph:

"After a final, furious push over the weekend that included near-deals, waffling, misunderstandings and growing acrimony between the two sides, the Denver Nuggets and New Jersey Nets are close to completing a complicated three-team trade to send Carmelo Anthony to New Jersey, league sources told Yahoo! Sports."

Wojnarowski reports Prokhorov wants to make this trade so badly, taking Al Harrington and Renaldo Balkman might not trouble him:

"Nevertheless, ownership is hellbent on acquiring Anthony. New owner Mikhail Prokhorov had talked a big game about making a splash over the summer and was shut out of the storied free-agent class. Prokhorov wants Anthony for the cachet he’ll bring in the New York area, and, most of all, wants him for the team’s 2012 move into the new Barclay Center in Brooklyn."