The New Jersey Nets Are Staring into the Void

Although Dwight Howard adjusts his intentions and expectations on a minute-by-minute basis, the fate of the New Jersey—and soon to be Brooklyn—Nets has always appeared painfully black and white. 

If Dwight Howard does find his way to New Jersey/Brooklyn either at today's trade deadline or in this summer's impending free-agent period, then the Nets will have a very strong chance of pairing him with incumbent—but vaguely flighty—point guard Deron Williams for the long term. 

If Howard ends up playing for any team but the Nets, then the likelihood of New Jersey/Brooklyn retaining Williams takes a sharp and rather inescapable drop.

Even at the risk of digging too much into Williams' possible motivations, it's nonetheless safe to say that a chance to play with Howard remains one of the Nets' primary draws; without the potential for a pairing of that magnitude, Williams is left pondering an...uncertain Nets roster, to put it kindly. No matter how highly you value MarShon Brooks and Anthony Morrow, they don't exactly register as superstar bait.

In that assumed framework, the Nets are actually in a pretty favorable hypothetical scenario: They either secure a pair of superstars to vault their franchise into a new dimension of competence and competitiveness, or hold the potential to completely bottom out, build on the strength of a 2012 lottery pick and those that would inevitably follow. In a world where far too many teams get bogged down on the perpetual fringes of playoff contention, an all-or-nothing enterprise may seem the most prudent. 

Yet the theoretical advantage of playing to the league's competitive extremes often understates the incredible allure of the great void that lies between them. It takes an admirable patience for a general manager or owner to stand pat in spite of their own substantial cap space; teams work relentlessly to create financial flexibility, and when those well-earned rewards are finally ready to be redeemed, a front office's philosophical commitment is tested.

Such would undoubtedly be the case for Mikhail Prokhorov and Billy King if all goes sour for the Nets, and according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, New Jersey is already considering its potentially futile options for a Howard alternative as a means of appeasing Williams. And honestly, who could blame them? 

Even with an understanding of the benefits of truly bottoming out, the Nets are still a team with an all-world player under contract, the promise of a new home to fill and a recent stretch among the league's bottom feeders.

While a prescription for spending more time among the NBA's most miserable clubs may be the most technically correct call, it's nonetheless an impossibly tough sell. The Nets have already survived a 12-win season that cost them a good head coach and likely the sanity of many involved—another round of that may just be the last antidote they'll willingly imbibe, especially in the place of what was supposed to be a Brooklyn renaissance.

It's not easy to sell an entire team—and fanbase, and newly welcoming community—on the idea of a season of scheduled failure, particularly when both Williams and Howard were so very nearly within the team's grasp.

So King will likely do what he can in his attempts to salvage the Nets' dignity; rather than slink quietly into next year's lottery, he'll likely fight to keep Williams, just as the Utah Jazz would have done, even as he faces the very real possibility of clogging up his team's cap picture for naught.

None of that makes any of the decisions that may come the correct ones. It merely makes them understandable overtures for a team that put itself in a precarious position, only to be sent over the edge by Howard's apparent change of heart.

The Nets' situation may appear exceedingly simple, but the team may well be in a no-win situation; barring an 11th-hour deal that returns serious assets in return for a Williams rental, New Jersey may soon find its way to the increasingly unsteady middle ground—that daunting void between the league's best and worst.

King has to fight for Williams, if only because a player so talented virtually demands it. But the wrong step (and the acquisition of the wrong contract in an attempt to sway him) could set the Nets' starless rebuild back several steps before it even truly begins.