NBA Rumors: Nets Want To Preserve Cap Space, Could Affect Kris Humphries Deal

The New Jersey Nets are in a tricky situation. On the one hand, they need to preserve cap space to assure the the possibility of working a trade for Dwight Howard. On the other, they need to flesh out their roster in case things don't pan out. 

Now Kirs Humphries is left on the sidelines, wondering what is going to happen. Humphries is about to ink a one-year, $7 million deal, but the possibility of the Howard deal going down tomorrow could be holding it up. 

The upshot of the procrastinating of the deal could be that the Magic get a worse deal. Mikhail Prokhorov could claim that he can't wait forever, sign Humphries and then say he would have taken Hedo Turkoglu's contract too, but now he can't afford it. Instead, he'll just have to take Chris Duhon's. 

It's a small kind of collateral, but it could be what forces the trade to go through tomorrow. Otis Smith could be thinking that if he doesn't get the deal done now then he could end up being a worse deal later, and the notion of getting a better one goes out the window. 

If the Lakers were going to give up both Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum, they probably would have done it by now, and the Magic are looking at the very real possibility that the deals only get worse now.

Of course, if the trade does go down then Humphries could be the one left out in the cold...again.