Nets carrying chip on their shoulders after ‘everybody was laughing at us’

The Brooklyn Nets are playing with some attitude in the Disney bubble, and their record has shown as much.

Things got a little tense toward the end of Tuesday’s game between the Brooklyn Nets and Orlando Magic after Wes Iwundu fouled Jeremiah late, stared down the rookie and appeared to have a few words. That prompted Justin Anderson to step in to defend his Nets teammate.

Anderson was also there when Iwundu started chirping again as the final buzzer sounded. Now, the rest of the Magic didn’t seem interested in getting in a fight with Brooklyn, but that may have been the result of how firmly Anderson barked back at Iwundu.

And Anderson’s reaction shouldn’t come as a surprise for Nets fans, for no other reason that he and his Brooklyn teammates have shown in the Disney bubble they’re not taking guff from anyone. Whether it’s Anderson v. Iwundu, Donta Hall v. Giannis Antetokounmpo or just the Nets’ overall play against teams like the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Clippers, they’re tired of people thinking so little of them.

“Everybody was laughing at us saying the Nets were going to look like this and seeing things all over the internet saying we weren’t going to do this,” Jeremiah Martin said on Tuesday, per Brian Lewis of the New York Post. “So we just take that every day, every practice, keeping that chip on our shoulder, proving everybody wrong and showing everybody who we are.”

The question now becomes: how much can that chip do for the Nets against the Toronto Raptors in the first round of the 2020 NBA Playoffs?