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

2. Can Brooklyn show some fight?

The Brooklyn Nets have been flat out pushed around by the Philadelphia 76ers in each of the last two games.

The Nets showed some resistance on Thursday night, at least, when Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Ben Simmons got into a bit of a scuffle, The pair was hit with double technical fouls.

But Brooklyn has got to bring some fight to the game Saturday afternoon because as it stands, they are just being physically pounded in this series.

The Nets have a defensive rebounding percentage of 60.8 through three games in this series. That is not surprisingly the worst of any team in the playoffs.

And as Brooklyn has learned the hard way, you give up a 39.2 offensive rebounding percentage to your opponent, you’re going to be giving up a whole lot of second chance points.

Philadelphia has 64 second-chance points in the series, compared to just 43 for the Nets. Throw in a 59-45 edge for the 76ers in points off turnovers and that’s a lot of factors working against Brooklyn.

The biggest thing for the Nets, however, is to simply show up and push back.

Coach Kenny Atkinson called out his club’s lack of fight after the Game 3 loss, per Brian Lewis of the New York Post.

"“If you don’t bring the physicality, and I think our guys understand, if you don’t bring the physicality in the playoffs, it’s just tough. So we’ve go to do what we do. We’ve got to raise our physicality and the energy level, no doubt about it. But we have to stick to our identity.”"

Part of that would be getting back to ball movement. Brooklyn had only 12 assists in Game 3 and have just 47 for the series, a series in which they have an assist percentage of 39.2. You guessed it … that’s the worst by any team in the playoffs.

Ball movement would be a good part of the Nets’ identity to retrieve for Game 4.