Oddmakers project the Nets will win fewer than 25 games. The delusionally confident Nets think they can win twice that many.
They’ve set it as a goal, talking about it privately and now publicly.
“That’s the goal from Day 1. We said our goal is to get 50 wins,” Terance Mann said Monday when asked by The Post about trying to lead a young, inexperienced group that, heretofore, has no idea how to win.
“So you’re going to have to go in there with the mentality that we’re going to get 50 wins. And that’s through the guys with years [of experience] leading that. Most of us came from winning situations, so we know what it takes, and that’s just what we’re going to do.”
It’s the start of training camp, so hope springs eternal. It just isn’t shared by many outside of the Nets locker room.
And they’re fine with that.
Their projected win total opened at just 19.5 and has climbed to 24.5 behind encouraging summers from 20-year-olds Egor Dëmin and Mikel Brown Jr., and what should be a potent frontcourt duo of vets Michael Porter Jr. and Julius Randle.
“Man, at the end of the day, we’re just trying to win,” Brown said.
Granted, they’re still projected to be among the league’s worst teams.
Still, Porter was the first Net to publicly predict a 50-win campaign. And even though he admits his answer was to a leading question by controversial streamer N3on, Porter said what he said, and is standing by it.
“Yeah, I mean the question was framed like he said, ‘Can you guys win 50 games?’ Of course I’m not going to say, ‘No, we can’t win 50 games,’” Porter said. “And I do genuinely believe you’re supposed to go out on the floor every night with delusional confidence and compete to win. And I do think we have the players that every single night our goal should be to win. And we can win.
“Yeah, obviously the NBA is stacked right now. The Eastern Conference is stacked. There’s a lot of good teams. But we definitely did nothing but get better last year. And there were a lot of games that we were in last year that we could’ve won. So for me, we have no choice but to go up. And why not shoot for the stars.”
The Nets might have a better chance of reaching the stars than winning 50 games, something they’ve done exactly once in their NBA history, en route to the 2002 Finals.
But Porter is right in that they should be better.
Their rookies suffered through the growing pains of a league-high 6,716 minutes last season. The only four teams in the past decade to play rookies more saw their win totals jump by 10.5 victories the next season, and another ten wins the next.
That — plus Randle’s on-ball scoring and ability as a floor-raiser — is why the incoming All-Star had vowed they can “shock the world.”
“It starts [Tuesday] with training camp and we just build from there. Stack days, continue to improve, come in with the right focus every single day. For me, when I do that and I’ve done that in my career, the teams that I’ve been a part of have done that… the results always follow,” Randle said. “We have great leadership in the coaching staff with Jordi [Fernández] and everybody else. We have the talent.
“It’s really just about the mindset, and not just coming in every single day, but coming in with intention and purpose, understanding things aren’t always going to be easy and knowing how to navigate those and showing up to work the same way whether you lose by 20 or win by 20, nothing changes, the process stays the same. So the biggest thing for us is just falling in love with the journey every single day, falling in love with the process and the results will follow.”
And maintaining that delusional confidence, even if the losses chip away at it.
