Think the Nets are firmly a playoff team, likely top-5 but not top-3 unless they can land Dwight - which is still plausible but not probable.
As John Hollnger pointed out tonight, NJ bizarrely using their full midlevel on Teletovic gives them a salary ceilling for this season that they would eclipse if they trade for Dwight...and also limits their ability to take back some of Orlando's dead-weight which takes another perk off the table for the Magic.
Unless Brooklyn doesn't follow through with their verbal agreements, the only way they could still land Dwight would be to resign everyone (Lopez, Humphries, Gerald Green) and hope as time goes by Dwight continues his stance that he won't resign with whatever team (outside of Brooklyn) he is traded to which would scare off other teams. Obviously the window of him going to the Nets will close next year...but a team like Houston, GS or even LA is still taking the risk he could have another mood swing and find another team w/2013 cap space to earmark for his future destination. If that scares off those teams, Orlando would feel pressure to get whatever they can for Dwight at some point before the 2013 trade deadline.
The idiotic thing of this entire fiasco is all Dwight had to do was exercise his PO for this season and he and Deron would both be in Brooklyn right now. He didn't, was either too worried about his public image (which is in the toilet now anyway) or was completely suckered by the Magic (unlikely since he wanted to go to Brooklyn since last summer), or he's just a wishy-washy athlete with very little common sense.
It's a shame, because I would've liked a Deron/Dwight combo far more than any of the others presently in the East.
Anyways it's a soft cap and their owner is rich as ****.
This is Hollinger's point. It's not a soft cap if they spend their full midlevel on Teletovic from Turkey. Luxury tax payers are prohibited from using their $5 million midlevel. If they don't use it and can match salaries for Dwight + other bad-contract, they would have huge penalties but Prokhorov would pay it. If their salary is capped at $74.3 million, they can't really pull it off.