This season the nets paid their top 5 players $42 million. The year before that it was $38M. Before that it was $34M.

To sign 3 max guys (dwill, gay, howard?) it'd cost $50M. Add $7M for Morrow and Petro to round out the top 5 and you're at $57M. That is a HUGE jump. How much will Uncle Mikhail pay??

Do we expect our team to start shelling out cash? If not, why would max guys want to come (or stay) here? I feel like it'd be better to end up in LA, Boston, Miami... basically anywhere the head honcho has shown he'll pay for a full cast.

Let's look at the Nets' "most likely" scenario right now (approximate numbers):

Re-sign Dwill ($18M)
Re-sign Wallace ($8M)
Sign Ilyasova ($9M)

Throw in Morrow and Petro and you're already at $42M. Add a few cheap FAs ($3-4M), then fill in the roster with a bunch of minimum guys, and you have a typical nets roster.

If the nets are really constrained by the budget, I think we need to abandon scenarios where we bring in every max guy we can get, and start focusing on the draft (rookie contracts are cheap) and hidden gems in FA.

Just to invite ridicule, I'm going to copy my list of beloved cheap FAs here:

Steve Novak
Greg Stiemsma
Spencer Hawes
Chauncey Billups
Ronny Turiaf
Ian Mahinmi
Danny Green
Brandon Bass