You want game notes for this? Too bad you're getting them anyway.
1st quarter Summary Nuggets 26-23:
Odd first quarter with very little flow. Nuggets offense was largely stuck in iso mud, and the points came in clusters. Ty Lawson lead all Nuggets scorers with 7. The Nuggets began the game with trying to get Kenneth Faried some easy looks, but that tailed off quickly as they offense got sludgy. Nuggets finished the quarter on a bit of a flurry to take a three point lead heading into the second quarter.
One observation. J.J. Hickson can be an offense-stopping chucker despite the impressive stats.
2nd quarter Summary Nuggets 62-43:
The Bench. THE bench. THE BENCH. That’s what this quarter was about. The Nuggets applied some massive full court pressure as they shut down the Jazz offensive flow and hit shots on offense. Darrell Arthur lead the burst with 10 points. Danilo Gallinari added 5 points 2 rebounds 1 assist and a block. Then the starters came back and continued the good vibes that the bench gave the team and expanded the lead even further. Arron Afflalo came in and tore up the nets with 7 points in quick succession. Good all around performance from the Nuggets in the first half. Nuggets held the Jazz to 6-21 shooting in the second quarter and held them to 23 and 20 points respectively in each quarter.
Nuggets shoot 56% in the first half. Arthur leads all Nuggets scorers with 10 points. Lawson has 9, Afflalo, Hickson and Faried each have 7.
3rd quarter Summary Nuggets 83-77
The Nuggets started the second half by kind of sleep walking. Rudy Gobert came in along with Kanter and made driving the lane difficult on the Nuggets. The Nuggets couldn’t adjust and the intensity of the Jazz began to catch up with the Nuggets. It seemed like the Nuggets lost their defensive rotations, and the Jazz couldn’t miss a shot as they began to regain confidence with each shot that went in. Alec Burks lead the way for the Jazz with 15 points, 8 in the quarter. Also, Lawson passed Michael Adams for 4th on the Nuggets all time assist list with a dish to Chandler early in the quarter.
Nuggets gave up 34 points in the quarter. That is not good.
4th quarter Summary Nuggets win 103-101
The Jazz ended the third quarter and continued into the 4th with a 22 – 4 run. Tying the game. A this point Brian Shaw took out the entire bench unit and put the starters back in. This resulted in a 7-0 run from the Nuggets and normalized things a bit.
Then the craziness happened. While the Jazz were in transition, Burks was driving the lane and AAA went up and managed to clobber Burks on the head. Flagrant 2 on AAA and an ejection. Kanter got a technical for shoving AAA after the play.
Down the stretch it got close, really close. The Nuggets closed with a lineup featuring Gary Harris, Ty, Arthur, Mozgov, Chandler. Notable in his absence is one of the Nuggets best clutch players, Gallo. When he finally entered the game when the Nuggets needed free throws (Gallo is 89% this season) he had Gallo inbound the ball to Darrell Arthur.
Quite frankly this wasn't the best example of coaching from Brian Shaw. Young coach kind of game. Very spotty with his adjustments in the third quarter, and never compensated for the loss of Mozgov to foul trouble in the third quarter. Never brought in McGee. No Nurkic. Too much Hickson. The Nuggets ended up pulling it out, but overcame their coaches mistakes and won the game.
The team is now 9-8. Over .500 for the first time since game one of the season It's good to see over .500 and hopefully it will continue.
Do I feel good about this win? Not really. Nor should the Nuggets. They escaped in spite of tripping over themselves big
time, but one HOPES the coach and the players learn from this.
