What’s going wrong for the Denver Nuggets? Everything

SALT LAKE CITY — The Denver Nuggets are just a week removed from being in a position to claim the No. 2 seed in the NBA’s Western Conference. They still entered the playoffs as the No. 3 seed, have one of the best one-two tandems in the league in Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic, but have been blown out twice in a row.

It’s certainly very easy for anyone, including Denver head coach Mike Malone, to point to the Nuggets’ defense as the main reason for the losses. When double teams on Jordan Clarkson lead to wide open dunks for Rudy Gobert and the Utah Jazz are getting nearly every open look they want, often by targeting Denver players who are widely viewed as weak defenders, it’s hard to look elsewhere than the defensive deficiencies.

The Nuggets, despite explicitly identifying three areas in which they needed to limit the Jazz, were once again disappointed by the results.

“We talked about it going in, that we have yet to take anything away from them,” Malone said. “You can’t get beat from the 3-point line, you can’t get beat in the paint, and you can’t get beat on the glass. That’s what’s happening for three games now. We’ve been dominated in all three of those areas.”

Though Malone has harped on his team’s lack of defense throughout the Nuggets’ time in the bubble, he’s finding that there is a never-ending list of problems to address now that they’re in the thick of the playoffs.

“Our performance tonight was nowhere near being good enough from an effort standpoint, from a competition standpoint, form a discipline standpoint,” Malone said after the Jazz’s 124-87 Game 3 win Friday. “They’re playing at a different level than us right now.”

Malone pointed to a stretch from midway through the first quarter to the 9:15 mark of the second quarter in which the Jazz went on a 23-6 run. Not only was his squad unable to keep Utah from taking a 20-point lead, but they were also only able to score six points over a nearly nine-minute stretch of the game.

“It was a wrap,” Malone said. “Everything after that — the second half, the last eight minutes of the second quarter — was just window dressing. We lost the game in that crucial stretch, and that obviously cannot happen against a good team like the Utah Jazz.”

While the defensive problems are ones that have been on display for weeks, the Nuggets have usually been able to rely on the fact that Murray and Jokic can generate an immense amount of offense no matter who they are up against.

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Enter Gobert and Royce O’Neale.

Tasked with guarding Jokic and Murray, respectively, they were able to hold Denver’s two stars to a combined 27 points in Game 3. Malone is fully aware that the Nuggets are largely dependent on the success of his two star players, but after Game 3, he wasn’t willing to let anyone off the hook.

“We’re not going to go anywhere if Nikola and Jamal combine for 27 points,” he said. “With that said, it’s not just on Jamal, it’s not just on Nikola. Everybody else has a job to do, myself included. None of us are performing. I’m not coaching well enough, we’re not playing well enough, and a lot has to change going into Game 4 because this is two games in a row that we’ve gotten our (butts) kicked.”

After weeks of his coach lamenting over a lack of defensive effort and now two straight blowouts, Murray was asked if Game 3 could be the wakeup call that the Nuggets have needed.

“It should,” he said. “We expect it to.”