BETTER BELIEVE

Giants goal: Ride daily improvement to the top

The question was posed to Eli Manning, who has been dodging and darting and answering these queries for more than a decade:

Is there any reason why this Giants team should not be good?

“No,’’ Manning said, without hesitation, but with a caveat.

“We got to stay healthy, we got to stay humble, we got to work our tail off during August and understand we do have to get better. We have to make improvements and we’re counting on everybody,’’ Manning told The Post recently. “We got to understand we can’t just rely on [the] past or rely on ‘Hey, we got good players, we’re gonna be good.’ It’s a matter of what work we put into it.’’

The work continues Thursday, when the Giants report to training camp, with their f irst practice Friday morning. For the f irst time in six years, the theme for the Giants is about building on what they’ve assembled and not salvaging something from the wreckage. This is largely the same team that went 11-5, swept the NFC East-champion Cowboys and re-established a defensive identity in Ben McAdoo’s first year as head coach.

As a result, the next step is to advance deeper into the playoffs — the Giants were knocked out, decisively, in the first round by the Packers in January — and talk of winning the division and making a run at the Super Bowl is legitimate, not farflung hyperbole.

“You can’t call it a Super Bowl team,’’ Jason Pierre-Paul said. “Every team that goes into training camp thinks they are a Super Bowl contender. We get the same speech over and over.’’

In the spring, McAdoo unveiled T-shirts worn by his players that read “Make Gains: 1%.’’ The message is clear: Make incremental improvements every day.

Last year, McAdoo downplayed the way his offense bumped and grinded during a sluggish and unproductive summer. McAdoo rose in the coaching ranks because of his offensive acumen, yet his first Giants team was carried by its defense, saddled with