The Eastern Conference’s top seed suddenly find themselves in a series much more competitive than anticipated.

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Rather than sitting in the comfortable position of holding a 3-0 lead, the Atlanta Hawks dropped Game 3 to the Brooklyn Nets 91-83 at Barclays Center on Saturday, 
allowing the heavy underdogs back into the series.

After giving away 31 points in the first quarter, Atlanta’s defence clamped down and surrendered just 60 points the rest of the way.

The offence, however, was stagnant and struggled to hit shots, finishing 35.6 per cent from the field and 6-of-30 on 3-pointers.

“We played pretty slow tonight. That’s not how we play,” forward Paul Millsap said. “We play fast, we get up and down the court, we run into our pick-and-rolls.

“We got caught into their pace tonight, simple as that. They did a good job of slowing us down.”

The Hawks were ranked sixth in the league during the regular season in offensive rating with 106.2 points per 100 possessions. 

So far, in the playoffs, their attack has lacked the fluidity they showed for most of the year.

Even when they took care of business at home in the first two games of the series, their winning margins were seven and five points, respectively.

In the four regular-season meetings with the Nets which Atlanta swept, they won by an average margin of 17.5 points and scored 114 points per game. 

Atlanta can put the series nearly out of reach with a win in Game 4 (Tuesday, 03:00), but another loss would put the pressure squarely on the favourites.

Elsewhere, the Milwaukee Bucks avoided a sweep and kept their season alive with a thrilling 92-90 win against the Chicago Bulls at home.

Jerryd Bayless hit the game-winning layup at the buzzer out of a timeout to send the series back to Chicago for Game 5.

Derrick Rose went for 14 points on 5-of-13 shooting and has followed up his impressive performances in Games 1 and 3 with low-scoring efforts in his next outing.