Jazz vs Nuggets score, takeaway: Utah overtakes Denver in shootout to shift a win from a series win

The Western Conference playoffs on Sunday did not disappoint. After Luka Doncic’s standout winner of the game lifting the Dallas Mavericks over the Los Angeles Clippers in overtime, the Utah Jazz and Denver Nuggets followed their own thriller. Thanks to another great game from Donovan Mitchell, the Jazz managed to escape with a 129-127 win to take a 3-1 series lead.

After losing Race 1 overtime, Jazz bounced back with three straight wins to take control of this series. Mitchell came forward in a big way and on Sunday night he finished with 51 points and seven assists for his second 50-point game of the series. There is only one victory left to advance to the second round for the third time in four seasons.

Jamal Murray played with the Nuggets again, finishing with 50 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists for a new career playoff record, but this time he was unable to drag the Nuggets to victory. Denver must now win three games in a row to avoid a second consecutive post-season exit.

Here are some key points of the game:

Mitchell vs Murray II

The 2020 NBA Playoffs kicked off with a thrilling duel between Donovan Mitchell and Jamal Murray in Game 1 of this series, as the two paced back and forth before the Nuggets pulled off the overtime victory. Sunday night they brought him back, somehow to an even higher level, and this time Mitchell was victorious.

Everyone else could also have left the court in the fourth quarter of Game 4, as Mitchell and Murray swapped basketball for basketball. Mitchell shed 18 of his 51 in the quarter, including a 3-pointer back right in Paul Millsap’s face to close the show. Murray’s 21 in the fourth, meanwhile, wasn’t enough.

Together, the duo made all sorts of stories overnight. They became the first ever opponents to score 50 points each in the same playoff match as Murray’s 50 was a career record and franchise playoff record and Mitchell became only the third player ever to score more than 50 twos. times in the same series. The others were Michael Jordan and Allen Iverson.

If you missed this game, the highlights of these two are worth watching.

Nuggets on the ropes

The Nuggets have been one of the best teams in the Western Conference in each of the past two seasons, finishing second last season and third this time. Unfortunately, as they’re on the verge of another early playoff exit, it may be time to start wondering if they’re just a regular season team.

These are strange circumstances playing into the bubble and missing two key members of their rotation in Gary Harris and Will Barton. But they are not the only team dealing with these kinds of problems; the Jazz are without one of their top scorers at Bojan Bogdanovic, and Mike Conley also missed matches 1 and 2.

At half-time, the guys from Inside the NBA made a good remark about Denver, regarding manager Michael Malone asking for more commitment from his players in Game 4: if your manager has to ask you to play hard in a crucial playoff game , you are already in trouble.

Now, the Nuggets must win three straight games against a jazz team that they haven’t been able to slow down at all. Since the NBA’s best-of-seven series, only 11 teams have returned from a 3-1 deficit, the last of which was the Cavaliers in the 2016 Finals.

Conley shines again

Mike Conley lost Games 1 and 2 of this series to return home for the birth of his son, and while it was one hundred percent the right decision, it was also a blow to Jazz. The veteran point guard had played great basketball on the bubble and his absence, coupled with Bojan Bogdanovic’s injury, left Utah without two of their best players heading for a tough streak with the Nuggets.

They managed to go 1-1 without him, and now that he’s back at Disney World, Conley is proving how important he is to this team. After scoring 27 points, four assists in the win in Game 3, he almost equaled that in Game 4, finishing with 26 points and four assists, including nine in the fourth quarter.

While it didn’t have a great start in its time in Utah, these latest games have shown exactly why the Jazz were so eager to acquire it. He has gone through countless playoff battles in his career and his ability to play ballless and take down 3 open helps open the field for Mitchell. If it keeps playing like that, the Jazz will be hard to beat.