After underwhelming play through the soft beginning of their schedule, the Nets have to head out on their longest road trip of the year.
And they don’t consider that a bad thing.
“I love it,” Taurean Prince said. “I love playing away. It’s a great time to grow camaraderie as a team, a great time to figure out who we really are. … I think road games make teams stronger.”
Hey, like Friedrich Nietzsche said, long western swings that don’t kill us make us stronger.
The Nets already have stumbled through the supposedly easy part of the slate, with five of their first seven games at home and only two versus teams that had winning records last season. Now the going is about to get harder.
“Five teams that are pretty good in our league,” Kyrie Irving said. “A great test to go on the road trip for that long.”
After Thursday’s practice, the Nets will fly out to begin a five-game swing through Portland, Phoenix, Utah, Denver and Chicago. They’ll be taking a step up in competition, too: That quintet is a combined 9-5 at home, while the Nets are 0-2 on the road.
“There’s a lot of team dinners, a lot of the camaraderie is built on these trips. Obviously we’re excited to compete on the West Coast, but the stuff off the court is fun as well,” Joe Harris said.
“It’s kind of fun, best friends, we’re together every day,” Jarrett Allen added. “We’re going to be out having fun and we’re also going to have the serious side of basketball, so we’re just going to go out there, work our hardest and enjoy the trip.”
Allen could end up working overtime on the trip. He has split the center spot with DeAndre Jordan, but the veteran suffered a sprained right ankle on Monday. The Nets offered no details on the grade or severity, nor any timeline for Jordan’s return.
What they did say was this trip offers an opportunity to develop chemistry.
“Obviously there’s nothing like being at home, but that’s really where you come together as a group,” Irving said. “You want to come out with a winning record. Take those opportunities to play on other organizations’ floors or going against other good guys in our league.
“Some great matchups up ahead. You just look forward to that challenge, just use the time to build team camaraderie, obviously spending some time in those cities. All we have is each other. We have our significant others sometimes on the trips, but for the most part it’s just us.”
The Nets haven’t commented on whether Jordan’s injury will change plans for a 16th player to replace the suspended Wilson Chandler.
Center Alan Williams led the G-League in rebounding last season as a Nets two-way player, but a source close to the 26-year-old — who is with Russia’s Lokomotiv Kuban — said he isn’t currently an option.
Former Nets chairman Dmitry Razumov ran Sunday’s New York City Marathon, and blistered through it in a solid 2:52.37.