The Jazz visited Denver tonight looking to lose their 5th straight game. There was a time last month when tanking proponents were nervous that Will Hardy and the young guns would surprise some teams to whom they should be losing. They even went 2-2 in one stretch, beating the mighty Lakers and the almost equally-mighty Houston Rockets. Since then, the Jazz have put up an impressive 3-16 record, seemingly in the driver’s seat to land the NBA’s #1 lottery spot. The worries about surprising good teams have been all but put to rest. They are certainly putting up respectable first halves, but they consistently get absolutely dump-trucked in second halves, which is what happened tonight.
**First Quarter**
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The Nuggets started off with a barrage of nifty passes inside and timely kickouts to go up 9-3, at which point Will Hardy called timeout.
The Jazz came out of the timeout and cut the lead to 9-7, but the Nuggets continued to be relentless on both ends of the floor, and before too long the Jazz found themselves down 19-9. By the end of the 1st Quarter, the Jazz found themselves down 26-15.
**2nd Quarter**
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The Denver lead continued to hover around 10, with the Jazz struggling to hit their spots on offense and playing like NBA All-Stars on defense—which is to say, playing as All-Stars do in the All-Star game itself—being traffic cones and allowing lots of dunks.
The Jazz hung around, though. Johnny Juzang, Keyonte George, Kyle Filipowski, and Brice Sensabaugh brought the Jazz to within two at the 7:17 mark.
At this point, Nikola Jokic checked back in to get the Nuggets’ offense back in shape. He scored, facilitated, and bullied them back to a 7-point lead, despite the valiant efforts of Colin Sexton. Here’s where Utah’s wheels started to fall off for good:
Instead of going into halftime with a 7-point lead, the Nuggets enjoyed an even ten.
**3rd Quarter**
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Sexton opened the scoring in the third, trading buckets with various Nuggets. He essentially kept the Jazz within ten by himself, but it was short-lived. It wasn’t so much that the Nuggets got hot, but the Jazz definitely got cold, and had no answer for Jokic on defense.
When the clock hit triple zeroes, the Jazz were down 19.
**4th Quarter**
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Russell Westbrook opened the scoring from deep, the Jazz continued to give up on defense, and the Jazz were down nearly 30 by the 10:18 mark. The rest of the quarter was more of the same. We can only speculate the ins and outs what Coach Will Hardy’s gameplan is, but it seems to be something along the lines of “compete in the first half and take it easy in the second.”
And they did. The game mercifully ended with the Nuggets winning by 36, 126-93. Next up, the Jazz have a pivotal game in Charlotte on Monday:
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It’ll be a tough one, but this is an important game for the Jazz to lose. Charlotte is the last team on the schedule that has a prayer of catching them in the Cooper Flagg Sweepstakes.