EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. ? Being written off isn’t new for the New Jersey Nets.

They had a deciding Game 5 in their first-round series against Indiana, and they were given little chance against Boston after blowing a 21-point fourth-quarter lead to lose Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

	When: 8 tonight.Where: Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, N.J.Television: Channels 27 and 41 (cable channels 8 and 14).Series: Lakers lead 3-0.

A funny thing happened in both cases.

The Nets won Game 5 against the Pacers despite a miracle shot by Reggie Miller at the end of regulation, and they rebounded to win Game 4 against the Celtics en route to knocking off Boston in six games.

New Jersey now faces its biggest comeback, trailing the Los Angeles Lakers 3-0 in the NBA Finals. No team has come back from a 3-0 deficit in any round of the NBA playoffs.

“I know the character of this team,” Nets coach Byron Scott said. “I know the makeup of this team. I know that history is against us doing this. It’s almost written down as being impossible. But I also know if we go out there and compete and we don’t let our guards down and they let their guards down, you know, we win a game and then we win the next game, then it’s a series again,.”

Game 4 of the best-of-seven series is tonight at New Jersey.

The Nets really believe they can play with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant.

“We’re not going to quit and we’re not going to lay down,” forward Kenyon Martin said. “We have pride. We want to win. We don’t want to get swept. So we’re going to come out and give the same effort we have.”

While the Nets haven’t beaten the Lakers, they have picked up a ton of information on how to play in the finals.

It was the same type of information Michael Jordan had to learn with the Chicago Bulls before they became a dynasty and the same stuff O’Neal had to absorb while being swept in the Finals in 1994 with Orlando.

For Martin, the key is to now go to the basket more. He did that in Game 3 and scored 26 points.

“We have to be aggressive and throw the ball in the blocks and see what happens from there,” Martin said. “We have to go inside-out, instead of outside-in and see how they play it.”

Forward Keith Van Horn insists New Jersey would be in a much better position to win a championship if the series started over today, instead of picking up with Game 4.

“In that first game we didn’t even play 50 percent of the way we are capable of,” Van Horn said. “We’ve slowly climbed the ladder, but we still haven’t been able to put together that game we are capable of. I think we are finally at the point where we know what we are capable of, and we now can do that against this team.”

The key is doing it.

“We feel, sitting in the locker room, that we should be sitting 2-1 instead of 3-0,” Jason Kidd said. “So you just got to play it out. But we’re not intimidated or scared of the guys. It’s just you got to be playing your best basketball at the right time of the year.

The Lakers are doing it now. The Nets aren’t, although they improved in some areas in Game 3.

They shot better than 50 percent and they succeeded in getting a couple of easy baskets with backdoor layups. They even had a fourth-quarter lead with less than seven minutes to play.

“We want to come back and make it a series,” rookie Richard Jefferson said. “We know how difficult it is, but we still want to make it a series. We still want to compete and do the best thing that we can.”