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Betting odds are out ahead of the 2024-25 NBA season, and they are projecting the Brooklyn Nets will be the NBA's worst team. After trading Mikal Bridges and pivoting to a rebuild, the Nets have an over/under win projection of 18.5, per FanDuel Sportsbook. Not only is it the lowest in the league this season, it's the organization's lowest in 30 years.
And several of Brooklyn's young players have taken note.
“Yes, I find it disrespectful. Just because we’ve got a lot of guys that people don’t know doesn’t mean we’re going to win just 19 games,” Day’Ron Sharpe said. “You can’t be one foot out and one foot in. I’m trying to win as many games as possible and a lot of people are going to doubt us and we’re gonna show them.”
“I feel like we're being slept on a lot just because we traded people… We don't have any household names that people really know. But I feel like that's just the media aspect. People just don't know about us. So I feel like it's gonna be the same way the Utah Jazz were when they got Lauri [Markkanen] and the beginning of the season people were like, ‘Oh, what's happening in Utah? Who are these guys? So I feel like it's gonna be the same type of thing for us, but time will tell.”
Can the new-look Nets surprise the NBA this season?
The 2022-23 Jazz team Sharpe refers to opened the season with a 23.5-win projection. However, Utah shocked the league out of the gate, opening the year 10-3. They finished the season with 37 wins and the NBA's ninth-worst record.
But that team had Markkanen, who earned an All-Star selection and the NBA's Most Improved Player award. It's unlikely the Nets will have a player who approaches that pedigree this season.
The most realistic candidate would be Cam Thomas. While he offers a different player archetype than Markkanen, the fourth-year guard flashed his growing offensive skill set last season, his first as a full-time member of an NBA rotation. Thomas led Brooklyn in scoring, averaging 22.5 points per game on 44/36/86 shooting splits.
The 22-year-old showed greater willingness to facilitate, averaging 4.0 assists per game over a two-month stretch late in the year. He also developed as a spot-up shooter, converting 43.6 percent of his catch-and-shoot threes on career-high volume.
Now entering the season as Brooklyn's go-to offensive option, Thomas also marked down the historically low win projection.
“I can't speak for anybody else, but I look at it as motivation,” he said. “I've always been doubted ever since I started playing basketball. So whenever I see something like that or my mom tells me about it, I always just laugh, but then I always keep a mental note in my head and try to prove everybody wrong. So that’s just how I feel. I just use everything as motivation for myself and the team.”
Why the Nets should be one of NBA's worst teams in 2024-25
While Thomas and Sharpe are out to prove the doubters wrong, players don't tank; front offices and owners do. Brooklyn's brass knows the task at hand this season. General Manager Sean Marks admitted the strength of the 2025 draft class, headlined by Duke's Cooper Flagg, played a significant role in his decision to trade Mikal Bridges and pivot to a rebuild.
Marks can further the Nets' tanking effort by trading veterans such as Cam Johnson, Dorian Finney-Smith, Dennis Schroder and Bojan Bogdanovic for more young talent or draft capital. However, those veterans are still on the roster to open the year, and losing games offers no benefit to them.
“I don’t look at it as a rebuild. I’m trying to win,” Finney-Smith said. “Especially if Ben [Simmons] is Ben [Simmons], I feel like we got a good chance to win some games. So I just try to go all-in and be two feet in and just try to get as many wins as I can, as we can.”
“No expectations, man. We’re playing with the church’s money,” he added with a laugh.
Johnson echoed a similar sentiment.
“Our job is to go in there and compete,” he said. “And on one hand, you say we have low expectations, then we just get to come out and play how we play without all that added stress that can come with that. So we can use it to our advantage. We can use it as a chip on our shoulder and use it as a weight off of our shoulder to go and just play how we do.”
