I already presented to you directly an article by Larry Coon why it would be a colossal blunder to gamble with the new CBA from Melo's position. There are just too many variables and unknowns for Melo to go out on a limb and declare he will wait for free agency.
Further, it was the Nets shrewd move of offering all that they did that inflated Denvers hand. Parkorov openly admits he intentionally made the Knicks inflate their offer. That cannot be blamed on Melo and cannot be credited to Denvers FO. It was a Machiavellian move by a Russian billionaire used to high level games of business intrigue.
There are S&T's, along wit many other potential salary clearing moves that can get us in a position to sign D will, Howard or CP3 so lets not pretend it's improbable or impossible for us to put together our own big 3. Further, you are overstating that we are left with a bunch of minimum scrubs. Billiups, S.Williams, Fields, Turiaf and Balkman are not scrubs.
Sure there is a possibility that the MLE will be done away with but I seriously doubt it considering how capped out most of the league is. Further, that is a problem all teams would have to contend with. Further, Amare's salary next year is 16.5 mil, not 20 mil as you suggest.
You are really inflating your home-team players worth IMO. They are all role players save Felton who in this system could be top 8 PG in the league. Watch the video, especially near the end to see an honest evaluation of our talent from Denvers prospective.
http://www.theknicksblog.com/2011/02/18/tkbtv-with-andrew-feinstein/