Brooklyn Nets: 3 questions looking ahead to must-win Game 4

1. Can the Nets shut up already?

In the wake of their Game 2 loss at Philadelphia on Monday, the Brooklyn Nets talked a lot about how they felt disrespected by Philadelphia 76ers stars Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons.

Then the Nets came out and laid a giant egg in Game 3 in front of a sellout crowd at Barclays Center.

Jared Dudley has been a terrific veteran leader for Brooklyn this season and deserves a great deal of credit for helping a young group mature into a surprise playoff team.

But he forgot one of the basic rules of the off-the-court aspect of playoff basketball: Thou shalt not annoy, perturb, spindle, fold, mutilate or staple an opposing team’s star.

Ben Simmons played Game 3 like a man possessed Thursday night. Simmons finished with 31 points — a career playoff high — to go with nine assists and three blocked shots.

Heck, he was so determined to make Dudley eat his comments after Game 2 that he even went 9-of-11 at the free throw line.

Dudley gave his opinion about Simmons’ game on Wednesday, per Sports Illustrated:

"“Ben Simmons is a great player in transition. And once you get him into halfcourt, he’s average.”"

Simmons offered a response:

Then he went out and made sure Brooklyn knew he could function just fine in the halfcourt, thank you very much.

Simmons scored on a variety of drives and post moves, throwing in some running baby hooks for good measure. Many of those points came out of halfcourt sets.

Whoops.

Simmons doesn’t have a jump shot. You know it. I know it. He knows it. Everyone knows it.

And he still keeps finding a way to impact games. He’s taken 25 shots (none of them jumpers, by the way) in the last two games in this series and made 19.

Shoot 76 percent and you can talk some trash.

Dudley played 17 minutes for the Nets in Game 3, missing both of his shot attempts. One of those misses was spectacular, a 3-point attempt that touched nothing but the floor when gravity did its inevitable thing.

Whoops.

Maybe with a single day before Game 4, the Nets will have less time to talk.