Murray Leads Nuggets Past Jazz To Force Game Six

Murray (shown here in Game 4) took over in the second half of a win-or-go-home Game 5 on Tuesday. (David Dow via espn.com)

The Utah Jazz have played a phenomenal first-round series against the Denver Nuggets despite being without their second leading scorer, Bojan Bogdanovic. Thanks to phenomenal performances from Donovan Mitchell, the Utah Jazz found themselves up 3-1 going into Tuesday’s Game 5, with a chance to close out and earn their first playoff series victory since 2018, when they defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder 4-2.

The Jazz started off game five on fire as they hit four triples in a row, courtesy of Mitchell, Joe Ingles, and Royce O’Neale. Utah jumped out to a quick 16-6 lead the Jazz, but would go back and forth with Nikola Jokic as he had 21 first quarter points on 8-for-8 shooting and could not be stopped. Jokic even hit a deep three-point shot at the end of the first quarter despite being doubled and launching it off of one foot to give the Nuggets a 33-32 lead.

The entire Jazz squad came to play as they took over in the second quarter with contributions from every player. Utah was able to connect on 11 of their 22 three-point attempts in the first half as Jordan Clarkson and Joe Ingles scorched the nets, combining for 25 first half points and six of the teams 3-pointers. The Jazz also stepped up their defense as they held Jokic to just two points in the period and outscored the Nuggets 31-21 in the second quarter to take a 63-54 lead into the half.

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JC with BOUNCE! 🔥

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Utah started the second half out strong, leading 71-56, as the offense took advantage of the Nuggets poor pick-n-roll defense. But Denver refused to go away as Jamal Murray torched the Jazz for 15 points in the third quarter and cut the lead to just 4 to end the period.

The final period of play was a heavy-weight battle. The teams were not only trading buckets, but highlight plays that included some incredible shots by Jamal Murray and a MASSIVE dunk by Donovan Mitchell over several Nuggets players. But this time Murray would get the best of the Jazz as he refused to miss down the stretch and the Jazz didn’t have an answer. Murray would score 33 of his 42 in the second half and kept the Nuggets alive to fight another day.

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goodness. gracious. 😱

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Performance of the Game

It may seem like a “quiet” night for Mitchell seeing as he didn’t drop 50, but he was still able to score a team-high 30 points on 47.8% shooting. Mitchell also continued to illustrate the development of his game as he shot 50% from 3-point range, including a few incredibly deep bombs.

“We’ve played a great series up to this point,” Mitchell said in his postgame interview. “There will be times where you do lose your composure. We’ve done a great job at keeping it through this series and keeping our heads in it. For us we’ve got to go out there and continue to do what we do. We lost that tonight. I don’t think it’s a concerning thing for us, we’ve just got to not overreact, get right back to it, get in the gym, and make our shots.”

Notable Performances

Jordan Clarkson continued to fulfill his bench scoring roll as he was hot from deep early on. Clarkson recorded three first half triples and ended the night with four total on 57.1% shooting from 3-point range. He finished the game with 17 points, 3 rebounds and 2 assists.

Despite the loss, Ingles looked fantastic in Tuesday’s contest. Over the last two games Joe only scored two total points (some young kid was busy scoring all the teams points) but in Game 5 Ingles came out aggressive. He scored 13 points on 3-of-6 shooting from 3-point range. He also recorded three rebounds, three assists, and two steals.

Notable Statistic

The most notable statistic from Tuesday is a collection of statistical differences between the first and second half for the Jazz. In the first half the Jazz scored 63 points, shot 56% from the field, connected on 11 of 22 three-pointers, had 16 assists, and 20 bench points. In the second half the Jazz saw a massive drop in each stat as they only scored 44 points, shot 43% from the field, only knocked down five of 12 three-pointers, had seven assists, and only six bench points. These were major statistical differences that allowed the Nuggets to take control in the second half and prevent the Jazz from closing out the series.

The Jazz now lead the series 3-2 and will have another opportunity to close it out in game 6 on Thursday afternoon at 2 p.m. MDT.