Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — There wasn't enough "chaos" on Friday night in Denver.
At least not to Mike Conley.
For the Utah Jazz's veteran point guard, the reason for his team's early-season success has been simple: They've played fast, played free, and have played almost in a controlled topsy-turvy style. Good things had followed.
"We're actually really good in chaos," Conley said.
They're not as good, though, when the game is slow and methodical. That's what happened for too much of the game in the Mile High City on Friday.
The Denver Nuggets beat the Utah Jazz 117-101 at Ball Arena to hand Utah its second loss of the season. The Jazz are now 4-2 heading into Saturday's home contest against Memphis.
"Denver dictated the tempo of the game," Jazz coach Will Hardy said. "We kind of got sucked into playing at their pace."
The Nuggets are a half-court team, and they want to get the ball into Nikola Jokic and let him run everything. That makes for a lot of two-man games, and a lot of long sets. The Jazz couldn't seem to speed the Nuggets up; and in turn, they slowed down.
Utah struggled to run off made baskets; and even when the team got stops, it wasn't able to push the pace consistently. When the Nuggets went on a 29-7 run in the first quarter to erase an early short-lived Utah lead, it forced the Jazz to play from behind all game.
"We're trying to be perfect and get the right mismatch, and it really slowed our game," said Conley, who had 14 points and five assists. "... As we saw as the game went on, we had our good stretches — it was a lot of up and down. It was a lot of random switches on defense and just being wild but under control. I think we just lost that when they came out hitting on all cylinders."
Even when Denver wasn't hitting on all cylinders, the Nuggets still seemed to hit shots — and a lot of them.
Denver shot 17-of-37 from 3-point range, led by Bones Hyland, who hit seven shots from distance. The Jazz, meanwhile, were just 10-of-39 from behind the arc; Utah made four 3-pointers in the first three minutes of the game and just six in the next 45 minutes.
Jordan Clarkson was 0-for-7, Talen Horton-Tucker was 0-for-5 and Collin Sexton was 1-for-4.
"I thought, for the most part, we got good 3-point looks," Hardy said. "You know, JC going 0-for-7 is definitely an anomaly. I thought he took good ones tonight. I thought he took catch and shoots. I didn't think that he was really forcing up his three ball. We got some good looks that just didn't go tonight, which can happen. That's the part about the 3-point line, there can be a lot of variance in shooting from night to night."
It wasn't Utah's night from deep, and Denver had some guys going supernova. So even with Jokic limited to 12 points, 10 rebounds and six assists, the Jazz couldn't keep pace, especially being shorthanded.
The Utah Jazz knew they were in for a difficult night even before they got to Denver.
The team got word on Thursday that Rudy Gay and Simone Fontecchio had entered the league's COVID-19 protocols, and ahead of the game Walker Kessler was ruled out due to a non-COVID illness.
Throw in the fact that Denver had probably a bit of extra motivation after being Utah's first surprise victim of the season, and the Jazz were facing an uphill battle.
Utah made some pushes throughout the game to keep it relatively close. Lauri Markkanen had 17 points and 10 rebounds on the night, and his layup midway through the third quarter cut the Nuggets' lead to 7.
Sexton scored all 13 of his points in the third quarter to keep Utah within 11 entering the fourth quarter; however, the fourth quarter started with a 15-1 run for Denver and Hardy waved the white flag as the Jazz started to think about Saturday's game.
"I thought we hung tough, and in some crucial parts of the game we were able to get some stops and then not able to convert on the other end," Hardy said. "And then their bench really hurt us, especially to start the fourth quarter to blow the game open.
"So credit to Denver; they're a great team. Very well coached and they played better than us today."
