Denver Nuggets force a Game 7 as Utah Jazz’s offense fades away in Game 6 loss

KISSIMMEE, Fla. — The Utah Jazz had two chances to send the Nuggets out of the bubble, back to Denver and coast into the Western Conference semifinals. Instead the Jazz and Nuggets will face off in a win-or-go-home Game 7 on Tuesday.

It would probably be an easier pill to swallow if the Jazz could completely blame their Game 6 loss on a hungry and desperate Nuggets team, but they can’t.

No doubt about it, the Nuggets played exactly like they needed to in an elimination game. As a team, Denver left literal blood, sweat and tears on the court at the Arena in a 119-107 Game 6 win behind 50 points from Jamal Murray. The Jazz? They shot themselves in the foot on possession after possession and if they’re looking for whom to blame for Sunday’s loss, they need look no further than the mirror.

Donovan Mitchell said that the Jazz were not down, but they were angry. “If we’re down now then we’ve already lost Game 7. ... There were things we could do to win this game.”

Let’s rewind to Game 2, the most complete and best game the Jazz have played so far in this series, or even Game 3, which was also won by the Jazz in convincing fashion. The reason that those games felt so effortless and effective was because after Game 1, in which Mitchell scored 57 points and the Jazz still came up short, the Jazz shifted from an isolation-heavy game and moved the ball, played in the pick-and-roll and punished the weak Nuggets’ defense when it couldn’t recover off quick decisions.

After the first quarter there was little to none of that ball movement or pick-and-roll action from the Jazz, meanwhile Murray was getting whatever he wanted whenever he wanted.

“We kind of stopped moving the same way we were moving in the first quarter, and it made everything harder on us,” Rudy Gobert said after the game. “I really think that our offense affected our defense, and we have to find a way to play through their defense and be able to keep moving the ball for 48 minutes.”

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The Nuggets knew they would need to rely on Murray and made no secret of how much they were planning on using him Sunday night. The Denver guard played just under 21 of the 24 first-half minutes and scored 25 points, then doubled his production in the second half while finishing with 43 minutes played.

Murray weaved through the Jazz defense with ease, got the switches he wanted, made the Jazz chase him over screens, made Royce O’Neale look like a defensive novice and hit shot after shot after shot.

It wasn’t just with Murray that the Jazz’s defense found themselves in trouble through the first two quarters. There were lapses on rotations, lost assignments, and just lack of effort across the board. Pair that with the fact that the Nuggets were swiping rebounds right out of the hands of Gobert, while the Jazz struggled from the free-throw line and it was a pretty ugly affair from the Utah side.

Following the game Jazz coach Quin Snyder rightly said that the Jazz defense needs to be more disciplined if they want to survive this series, but the Jazz also won’t be able to survive if they stick to the hero-ball script.

If not for the Jazz shooting upwards of 50% from three in the first half, they would have been down double digits at intermission. The biggest saving grace was Joe Ingles blocking a 3-point attempt by Murray with seconds left in the first half and on the other side Ingles closed out the period with two free throws, cutting the Nuggets’ lead to just five. It was a great sequence, but one of too few throughout Game 6, and would close out Ingles’ production for the night as he went scoreless in the second half finishing with just five points.

“We’ve got to be more determined to attack quickly and make quick decisions,” Snyder said. “We’ve got to trust each other.”

Rather than rely on the smooth passing and non-hesitating quick decisions that gave the Jazz such convincing Game 2 and 3 wins, the Jazz were stagnant and slow moving.

The Nuggets have to have big performances from Murray and Nikola Jokic in order to win. The two combined 65 or more in each of the Nuggets’ wins in this series. The Jazz on the other hand don’t need Mitchell to score 50-plus to win. They have the offensive weapons to spread out the scoring and they do better when that’s the case as evidenced by the 30- and 20-point nights that Mitchell had in games 2 and 3.

“As much as anything, we can’t obsess about any one guy’s opportunities and situations,” Snyder said. “It’s a collective effort. When Rudy has a night when he gets a lot of shots and scores it’s usually when the ball is moving and we’re breaking the defense down.”

The Jazz had two chances to finish off this series and weren’t able to get it done. Their last chance comes on Tuesday.