The Nets will ring in 2019 with their best New Year’s Day record in more than a decade.
It shows the bar has been raised and they want more. Far more.
“I wouldn’t say [we’ve made] big-time progress. I’d say kind of on the track that we’ve been on, calculated progress, we’re on track, incremental progress,” coach Kenny Atkinson said. “We’re not skipping steps. I think we’re on the right road.
“But again, I think we’re all like, ‘We want more.’ If I look at that record, I wish it’s three more wins, or four more wins. But I like the track we’re on, a marginal improvement rate from last year if we can keep on this pace. That I’m pleased with.”
That record is 17-21, their most victories by New Year’s since 2005-06. Their nine December wins are their best in any month since March 2014. But arguably the greater sign of progress is that the Nets — who had been almost exclusively about player development in Atkinson’s first two seasons — are clearly becoming more results-driven.
After playing the second-most clutch games in the NBA last season — within five points in the final five minutes — the Nets lead the league this year with 24. They’ve shown signs of those hard-earned lessons sinking in, bouncing back from a 4-12 start by taking six of their past eight clutch games.
But Atkinson and his Nets will go into the New Year — and a Jan. 2 game against New Orleans — ruing back-to-back losses Friday at Charlotte and Saturday at league-leading Milwaukee.
“I think as a coach you’re disappointed,’’ Atkinson said. “I wanted to get that win [Friday] night in Charlotte. I thought that was a gettable game.
“[Saturday] I think we knew it was going to be difficult with the back-to-back considering how good they are. I knew it was going to be tough. But I’m glad with how we fought to the end [in Milwaukee].”
Playing all those nail-biters — along with a league-high 38 games already under their belt — appears to have taken a toll on the Nets. They’ve looked leg-weary, and with Caris LeVert, Allen Crabbe and Treveon Graham all still injured, Atkinson opted to rest both D’Angelo Russell and Ed Davis against the Bucks.
But this year’s Nets team at least has legitimate expectations, unlike the past two. And they’ll actually be playing meaningful games to start 2019, going into Sunday just a game behind Detroit for the eighth and final playoff seed.
“It says we have a solid group of guys 1 through 17,” Atkinson said. “We can go deep into our roster and get contributions. That’s really helped us. Obviously, we’ve had a few surprises, both young and old, guys who didn’t think they were going to be playing this much and are. It’s great. I think we have more depth than we’ve had before.”
Of course, it would’ve been hard for the Nets not to raise the bar. It was on ground level when Atkinson took over.
The Nets went from an NBA-worst 20-62 to 28-54 last year, the second-biggest jump in the Eastern Conference. While Las Vegas only pegged them to improve by half as much this season, they’re on pace for 37 wins despite the loss of LeVert for months with a gruesome foot injury.
“[We’re] figuring out how to win,’’ Russell said. “We’re coming to a conclusion on what we’ve got to do when it comes to finishing games. Making those winning plays, and they just keep adding up, and I feel like it’s creating good habits for us going down the stretch.”
But the difference is they’ll be playing down the stretch expecting to win games, and it’ll sting when they don’t. That’s part of their incremental progress.