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SALT LAKE CITY — Of course, it was the Nuggets.
Denver halted the Jazz's momentum dead in its tracks last August in the playoffs, and it did the same thing on Sunday.
The Nuggets snapped Utah's NBA-best 11-game winning streak, beating the Jazz 128-117 at Pepsi Center. Utah (15-5) dropped to second in the Western Conference with the loss.
So how did the sizzling hot Jazz, who had beat teams by an average of 15.6 points during the long streak, finally get beat?
First off, Denver had Nikola Jokic. Secondly, the Nuggets couldn't miss early. That's not hyperbole, either. Denver went 8-for-8 from 3-point range in the first quarter, believed to be most made threes in a first quarter of a game by a team without a miss. The Nuggets were 15-of-17 from 3-point range in the first half to build a 25-point halftime advantage.
Jokic had four of those threes in the first half — along with plenty of other shots. The MVP candidate was in true MVP form, scoring a career-high 47 points on 17-of-26 shooting and grabbed 12 rebounds.
He was unstoppable, but the Jazz may have helped him get going early.
Utah began the game off with Bojan Bogdanovic taking Jokic. It was a similar strategy to what Utah had did successfully against the Dallas Mavericks. The theory behind it is simple: Let a smaller forward take the scoring center and allow Gobert to roam a bit on the defensive end. It worked against the Mavs to limit Kristaps Porzigins. It just helped open things up for Jokic.
"The first possession we wanted to have a little more help and Rudy was a little late coming over," Jazz coach Quin Snyder said. "Then there were a couple other possessions where he made some tough plays."
Jokic scored on the first possession of the game and he never stopped. After Utah's semi-gimmicky scheme didn't work, Derrick Favors got the call to check Jokic midway through the first quarter — he didn't have any more success. By the time Gobert was asked to regularly take Jokic, it seemed only an act of God could have stopped the Nuggets center.
"Once a player gets going, starting hitting shots and especially somebody of his caliber … it's kind of tough to take that player out of his zone," said Favors, who had missed the previous two games with a sore lower back.
He shot over defenders from the 3-point line, he beat Favors in the low post and even drove in from the 3-point line to beat Gobert at the rim. He scored 22 points in the first quarter and had 33 points at halftime.
"It's definitely tip your cap, but at the same time, you have to believe, everybody in our locker room has to believe that we can do better," Snyder said. "And I think we are capable of doing better."
To their credit, the Jazz did in the second half. The Nuggets shot 3-of-11 from the 3-point line after halftime and Jokic was limited to "only" 14 points (a stellar half in pretty much any other game), but the damage had already been done.
"We kind of made it a little bit more tough for him, but by the time he was already going in the whole team was hitting shots," Favors said. "We just got to come out just a little harder, play a little bit more energy and not make it so easy for them on both sides of the ball."
Utah was able to cut what was a 28-point lead to just to 8 with a big 23-6 run in the third quarter. In the end, though, it was too steep of a climb to get back into the game. Bogdanovic led the Jazz with 29 points on 8-of-13 shooting. Donovan Mitchell, playing after missing two games in concussion protocol, had 13 points on 3-of-12 shooting.
The Jazz were 20-of-47 from three on Sunday, their 10th game with at least 15 or more (tying the NBA record). They also set the record for most threes ever in a calendar month with 285.
The offense wasn't the problem, though; Jokic was.
"I mean it's tough to win a game against a good team when you give up 80 points in the first half (Denver scored 79)," said Gobert, who had 12 points and eight rebounds. "That's what we did tonight."
So the streak is over — which will only undoubtedly fuel more flames to the rivalry between the Nuggets and Jazz.
"You can't be at the top all the time and sometimes we're gonna have nights, or we're gonna have quarters, or moments where we're not as good," Gobert said. "We got to make sure that we know why, we understand why. … Tonight was one of those nights."
