Nets Notes: Humphries, Garnett, Ilyasova, D-Will

It's been a rough week for the Nets, who failed to land a top-three pick in Wednesday night's draft lottery, reducing their leverage when it comes to a potential Dwight Howard trade. And speaking of Howard, the lottery results came on the heels of a report by Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports that suggested the Nets' chances of re-signing Deron Williams may hinge on being able to acquire Howard. Let's check in once again on the Nets, with a few updates courtesy of Fred Kerber of the New York Post….

• There's a chance the Nets re-sign Kris Humphries, but Ersan Ilyasova and Kevin Garnett continue to be targets for Brooklyn. We heard about the Nets' interest in both players periodically throughout the season.
• The trade with the Blazers left the Nets with only the 57th overall pick in the draft, but GM Billy King hasn't ruled out trying to add another pick: "If there’s players we can add in the draft, we’re going to do it. If not, there’s free agents out there that we’re going to go after and we have the ability to sign them because we have cap room."
• King also sounds more confident than ever on the team's chances at retaining Williams: "We’ll do everything we can [to improve]. We’re going to re-sign Gerald Wallace. We’re going to re-sign Deron Williams."
• Kerber suggests that even without Howard, the Nets have a chance at a core of Williams, Wallace, Brook Lopez, Gerald Green, MarShon Brooks, and perhaps Ilyasova and Andrei Kirilenko. This seems wildly optimistic to me. As I wrote when I previewed the Nets' offseason, re-signing Williams, Wallace, and Lopez would probably only leave the team with about $7MM in cap space. So I'm not sure where the money for free agents Green, Ilyasova, and Kirilenko would come from, unless multiple players took discounted deals.

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