Yeah this needs a resolution immediately.
Masai Ujiri is showing how green he is right now. This is his first full time gm gig and he's behaving like a bit of a child...either that or management doesn't trust him to make the right deal, so they keep on putting new demands on him. First it was "move Melo and Billups and get 5 draft picks"...then it was "they'll take Billups too? Move Al Harrington also, then!"
I'm not sure why Ujiri gets the child label. He should be trying to get the most out of the trade deal and he holds all the leverage. Seems like he is doing his job. The Nets seemed to have leaked the deal to pressure it to happen, so I can't blame him for upping the cost now. That revereses the pressure on the Nets.
Denver should not rush this deal, they should get the most they can. The Nets have no leverage.
At some point there needs to be a breaking point. If you sit there and tell someone a deal is good (like it sounds the Nuggets did), then ask for more after Billy King goes out of his way to make it happen, then you're creating bad karma.
It would be nice to think that the NBA is made up of professional managers that don't hold grudges, but its an old boys club. If Masai Ujiri gets a rap for being difficult and a pain to work with because of this, it'll set the Nuggets back. After this deal, the Nuggets will be in the same place that the OKC were. They'll have a lottery pick that they think will be something special (Derrick Favors), they'll have a young pg (Ty Lawson), they'll have a ton of draft picks, and they'll lose a ton of games for the next 2 years.
But, Sam Presti made and continues to make awesome deals for OKC, and you never hear too much about them before they're done. He runs a tight ship, he knows what he wants, and he doesn't waiver or flirt in public. WHen he made up his mind that Seattle needed to blow it up, he made the Ray Allen deal for Jeff Green, Wally, and the #5 (or was it 6?), and that was that. People continue to work with Sam Presti because he makes deals in a professional manner. If he thinks the deal is good, he makes it. If he thinks it isn't, we never hear about it.
Masai Ujiri needs to either stop negotiations until the deadline, or make the deal. But he needs to not second guess whether or not he's getting the best deal and have some confidence in himself, because the worst case scenario (which is very real) is that Carmelo, Billy King, and everyone is just sick of it and Melo takes the best deal the Knicks can offer him in the offseason, and the best that Denver ends up with is a trade exception.