The Denver Nuggets won their eighth game in nine tries. Pretty, pretty good.
Denver beat the Utah Jazz, 142-121, on Saturday night. The win improves the Nuggets to 44-20 on the season, just a half-game behind the No. 1 seed Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference standings.
Jamal Murray led the way with 37 points on 13 of 21 shooting, 7 assists and 3 rebounds. He was particularly good at leading Denver’s bench units; the team was plus-13 with him on the floor while Nikola Jokić sat.
“Jamal loves to take ownership of this unit. That’s what I see,” head coach Michael Malone said of the bench units led by Murray.
The best way to describe this game was, well, weird. The Nuggets tied their season high for points in a game with 142. They finished three points shy of tying their season high in three points made, making 19 of 32 from behind the arc. Denver notched 30 fast break points, tied for the second most transition points they have scored in a game this season.
To do this, they are off to a good start. The Nuggets made 14 three-pointers in the first half. This allowed them to take a 39-point lead in the first half, the largest lead they have ever had in a game this season. Denver finished the first half on top, 78-44. That 34-point first-half lead tied a franchise record for largest halftime lead.
So, you’re probably reading this and wondering: Okay, when does the weirdest part start? It looks like the Nuggets had a very good game. What’s so weird about that?
Well, that brings us to the second half. Remember how the Nuggets held Utah to just 44 points in the first half? That’s how many points they allowed… in the third quarter alone. These 44 points scored by the Jazz in third represent the most points allowed by the Nuggets in any of them quarter this season. It was a historic evening in every way, for better or worse.
Utah cut its 39-point lead to just 16 points in the fourth quarter, but Denver then stopped the bleeding. In the end, Denver finished with a 21-point lead to secure one of its highest-scoring nights of the season.
“An ugly victory is better than a pretty defeat. So I’ll get the victory,” Malone said.
