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SALT LAKE CITY — After Donovan Mitchell hit one of his five 3-pointers in the third quarter, he happily skipped down the court with a message for the Denver Nuggets.
“It ain’t nothing personal,” he said.
The Jazz had fun on Wednesday. A lot of it.
Mitchell smiled, Rudy Gobert let out primal screams, and every member of the Jazz had a little pep in their step. It was just one of those games.
The Jazz pulled even in their first-round series by blasting the Nuggets 124-105 Wednesday in Game 2 at Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
Denver adjusted to Mitchell’s historic scoring performance in Game 1 by aggressively sending help at him so that he would be forced to give up the ball. Mitchell gave it up — but that didn’t end up being a good thing for the Nuggets.
Turns out, Mitchell can do a bit more than just score. Two days after dropping 57 on the Nuggets, Mitchell only took 14 shots and he handed out eight assists — seven of which were for 3s. Denver may have stopped his drives to the basket — at least partially — but the Nuggets had no answers for his passes.
“It shows his mentality that he's able to do what he did the other day and then tonight, in a different situation against different coverages and adjustments, he continued to make the right play,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said.
The Nuggets may have limited Mitchell some, but that just allowed the rest of the Jazz to get going.
Jordan Clarkson scored 26 points, Gobert had 19 and Joe Ingles finished with 18. Royce O’Neale had 9 points, eight assists and seven rebounds.
Utah was 20 of 44 from 3-point range — and the Jazz shot over 50% until the last few minutes when the game was already well out of hand. Utah led by as many as 31 points in the fourth quarter.
The Jazz had an offensive rating of 140.9, had 32 assists, and had just six turnovers. It was a dominant offensive performance.
“Everybody made the right play and shared the ball and we put ourselves in a good position,” Snyder said.
It all looked easy for the Jazz — especially for Mitchell. After setting up teammates in the first half, Mitchell erupted in the third quarter. He scored 21 points in the period as the Jazz turned the game into a rout. He finished with 30 points on 10-of-14 shooting, including 6 of 7 from deep.
Near the end of the second half, Gobert spiked the ball out of Nikola Jokic’s hands as the Denver center tried to put up a shot to beat the shot clock. Following the ferocious block, Gobert let a scream as he flexed. On the other end, he spiked the ball again — this time on a tip dunk right before the halftime buzzer.
That put an exclamation point on a 22-6 run to end the first half. That was a run Denver never recovered from.
Jokic had 28 points and 11 rebounds for the Nuggets and Michael Porter Jr. finished with 28 points on six made 3s, but the Jazz kept everyone else in check. Jamal Murray, who scored 36 points in Game 1, was held to just 14 points on 6-of-13 shooting and four assists. The Jazz put O'Neale on him for much of the game and Murray could never truly find a groove against the Utah forward.
“They're so unselfish and that just puts a lot of pressure on you all the time,” Snyder said. “So everybody's got to do their part on every possession. For the most part that's what happened tonight.”
The Nuggets shot 45% from the field and even continued their hot shooting from 3 by hitting 13 of 27. But that was no match for the Jazz’s elite offensive production on Wednesday.
“I don't you think you get too high or too low,” Snyder said. “They've been beating us this season. So the fact that we were able to get one, it's good —tie the series up. I think the keyword is series and we've got to continue to do it again.”
Game 3 is on Friday.
