You would think that after being absolutely punked in a playoff game, a professional basketball team would come out the next game ready to make a statement or perhaps show a little pride. If you were referring to the Denver Nuggets, you would be dead wrong.
Utah rounded the table for the second game in a row, giving the Nuggets a rolling xx to xx loss. The Jazz were sparked by the return of Mike Conley, who scored the easiest 27 points of his life by shooting 7-8 from three. In the forward, the Nuggets prevented Rudy Gobert like the plague – they could not defend him because he scored 24 points and grabbed 14 boards, and on offense, the Nuggets were afraid of even going anywhere in the court. Here’s a crazy stat: the Nuggets starters only shot two free throws the entire game. No willingness to attack, at all.
Nikola Jokic led the Nuggets with 15 points, but giving any kind of credit in this game is an absolute service. Jokic stopped last night. He is the catalyst for how this team plays and he looked like he could have less about the game. Unfortunately, almost all Nuggets followed suit.
The game was over after the first quarter and in a rare playoff moment, the entire fourth quarter was straight garbage time. If you were lucky not to have seen this game, you really missed nothing.
There’s an exhaustive list of X’s and O’s and schematic things and layouts that Denver did just plain wrong, but the biggest problem is that they had no heart, no pride, and no trouble. It’s like they thought they could run into this series after sweeping the season series and not game plan or do anything else and be okay. Meanwhile, Utah read Denver like a book and had an answer for everything the Nuggets visited.
The series is 2-1 in Utah, but it sure feels like it’s over. Game 4 is Sunday. Will anything change?
