3 reasons the Brooklyn Nets can win over 28.5 games in 2018-19

Last season, the Brooklyn Nets finished with 28 wins. How will they fare this season, with the over/under for 2018-19 set at 28.5?

Basketball never stops. Just a few weeks after the majority of NBA free agency has died down, the over/under projections for each team in 2018-19 came from Odds Shark. The Brooklyn Nets were set at 28.5, which seems to be underselling them.

Although they only accumulated 28 wins last season, anyone who watched them (or played against them) knows how close they were in several of their losing efforts. Spencer Dinwiddie managed some heroics (and a new nickname, WINwiddie), but for the most part, the Nets fell short in a lot of tight contests.

After all, who could blame them? Dinwiddie was thrust into a starting role after injuries to Jeremy Lin and D’Angelo Russell. To boot, the former never returned in 2017-18, and the latter was a shell of his former self after returning. The playmaking and ball-handling duties were supplemented in spurts by Caris LeVert and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, but never to the degree that Kenny Atkinson envisioned.

Not to mention, the floor-spacing just wasn’t there. Dinwiddie shot under 40 percent from the field, and the team as a whole missed more 3-pointers than anyone else in the league. This was all by design, of course, but the results simply weren’t there.

In general, the execution just wasn’t there in 2017-18 for many reasons. Pure variance played a part though, especially in those games decided by a coin flip. Three main factors will play into Brooklyn’s ability to outperform expectations in 2018-19.