The Denver Nuggets are entering the NBA season grind. The NBA Cup and Christmas Day are over, the All Star break, trade deadline and subsequent stretch run are two months away, there’s nothing left to do but grind through the Winter and try to pile up wins. For the Nuggets, that means taking care of business against teams like the Utah Jazz, even when on the road. Utah is once again headed towards another high lottery pick in their multi-year rebuild. They’ve won just seven games this season and while they have some promising young players like Keyonte George and talented vets like Lauri Markannen, they do not have a competitive roster. Denver needs to beat a team they’re supposed to beat tonight.
The Essentials
Who: Denver Nuggets (17-13) at Utah Jazz (7-23)
When: 7PM MST
Where: Two Hour Delay for “Technical Problems” Arena. Salt Lake City, UT.
How to watch/listen: Denver Stiffs does not condone piracy…unless it’s the romanticized 17th century type. Altitude TV where available, Altitude +, NBA League Pass for those not in the Nuggets market, Altitude Radio 92.5FM.
Rival blog: SLC Dunk
The Matchup
| Position | Nuggets | Jazz | Advantage |
| PG | Jamal Murray | Collin Sexton | Nuggets |
| SG | Russell Westbrook | Jordan Clarkson | Even |
| SF | Christian Braun | Cody Williams | Nuggets |
| PF | Michael Porter Jr. | Lauri Markkanen | Even |
| C | Nikola Jokic | Walker Kessler | Nuggets |
| Bench | Julian Strawther, Peyton Watson, Hunter Tyson, DeAndre Jordan | Brice Sensabaugh, Isaiah Collier, Johnny Juzang, Kyle Filipowski, Micah Potter | Even |
Injury report: Aaron Gordon – out (calf), Vlatko Cancar – out (knee), DaRon Holmes II – out (achilles), Trey Alexander – out (G-League), PJ Hall – out (G-League); Keyonte George – questionable (ankle), John Collins – doubtful (hip), Taylor Hendricks – out (leg), Oscar Tshiebwe – out (G-League), David Jones Garcia – out (G-League).
The Three Things
The thing to watch for: stop the threes
Utah wins this game if Denver refuses to defend the three point line like they have in their most disappointing losses this season. Markannen is still a three point sniping stretch big, Jordan Clarkson is still a microwave who can get hot and kill you from outside, Collin Sexton is shooting 43% from three this season and a number of the Jazz reserves are solid shooters as well. Utah is right in the middle of the pack in terms of threes made per game but just twenty-third overall for points in the paint. It should be Denver’s focus on defense tonight to run the Jazz off the three point line and make them force the issue inside.
The thing to remember: now is the time
The Nuggets have looked clunky to start the season. Nikola Jokic said recently though that while the team is a long way from where they need to be, they’re in a good spot all things considered. I think that’s dead on. Not making excuses but the fact of the matter is Denver’s early season schedule was pretty brutal, the back to back over the weekend was the first set of consecutive home games Denver has had since November 10th. Sixteen of their first thirty games are against teams that are in the top eight of the standings in their conference. They’ve played six back to backs (which ironically seems to help them). On top of that Jokic, Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon have all missed multiple games. Outside of AG, Denver appears to be getting healthy and they’re currently in game three of a nine game stretch that has only two road games, neither against a team with a winning record. They’re currently 1-1 over that stretch. If Denver can go 6-3 during this period they’ll head in to an admittedly tough back half of January seven games over .500.
The thing to bet: Jamal Murray over 2.5 threes (+115)
Vegas is catching on to the fact that Jamal is figuring out. They’ve bumped his points line up to 23.5, but still haven’t bumped the 3 pointers line which is amazingly still giving out plus odds on over 2.5. Since Jamal returned from injury on December 13th he’s hit three or more three pointers in 4 of the seven games. The three he didn’t? The first game back from injury, the game he tweaked his ankle and the Christmas game where he played on said ankle that clearly wasn’t right. Since he’s returned he’s averaging six attempts a game and if we take out the Christmas outlier where he only attempted two that average goes up to almost seven attempts a game. So what are we asking here, do we think Jamal will go 3-7 from three? At +115 I’m taking that chance.
