Nets show ‘fight,’ but drop opener

These young, hungry Nets have not yet begun to fight.

Actually, they showed plenty of it in the fourth quarter Wednesday night in Atlanta, but couldn’t pull out a victory in coach Jordi Fernandez’s debut.

Nic Claxton returned from injury and got ejected during a skirmish-filled final period and Cam Thomas scored 20 of his game-high 36 points over the last 12 minutes.

However, none of it resulted in win No. 1 for Fernandez as Brooklyn lost its season opener, 120-116, to the Hawks in front of 17,548 fans at State Farm Arena.

A heated contest that featured a pair of near brawls and 52 personal fouls boiled down to what happened after Claxton was tossed for fouling Dyson Daniels with 8:03 to play and Atlanta leading by five.

Daniels took exception to what was called a flagrant foul following a review, jumping into Claxton’s face behind the basket stanchion.

“That was clearly a foul,” Fernandez said of the incident, which resulted in Claxton logging just 15 minutes off the bench in his first action of the year after he sat out the entire preseason with a hamstring injury.

Claxton, who was inked to a four-year, $97 million contract this past offseason, finished with seven points and six rebounds. He also got some support from his coach when Fernandez was asked if a possible suspension was looming for the 6-foot-11 center.

“You know, we don’t want anybody to see anybody get hurt. I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean to,” Fernandez said.

Cooler heads did eventually prevail, but not for long.

The teams went at it again after Thomas fouled De’Andre Hunter on the way to the basket less than a minute later.

This tete-a-tete called for security guards and coaches holding back players on both benches before the teams got back to playing.

Net killer Trae Young took over thereafter, scoring on a nine-foot floater…