The first playoff series we’ll get in the Bubble is the 3-6 tilt in the Western Conference between the Denver Nuggets and the Utah Jazz. The two Northwest Division foes will tip things off at 1:30 p.m. on ESPN on Monday afternoon, with the series’ winner advancing to take on either the Los Angeles Clippers or the Dallas Mavericks in the conference semifinals.
Both teams are quite familiar with one another, having played three times this season with the team from the Mile High City taking all three. Having said that, the playoffs are a different animal, and each team will look for that one extra bit of something with the hopes of pushing them over the hump against a team with which they’re so familiar.
We know who the stars are in this series, as much attention will be paid to Nikola Jokic vs. Rudy Gobert and Jamal Murray vs. Donovan Mitchell. However, the playoffs are so often about who else steps forward for a team, and as such, we’ve decided to identify an X-factor for both teams in hte series. While these will not necessarily lead to one side getting the clear-cut advantage over the other, every little bit counts, and the following two things could end up tilting the series one way or another if all goes right.
Denver Nuggets: Michael Porter Jr.
Well, as it turns out, this guy is quite good at basketball. While talent has never been the question with Porter, his back issues were a legitimately gigantic concern coming out of the draft two years ago. He seems healthy now, and after going through some of the growing pains you’d expect out of a rookie, the Nuggets young star has exploded in the Bubble, earning a second-team selection when the league announced its seeding games teams.
That aforementioned talent, particularly when it comes to scoring the basketball, has come through in a big, big way. In seven games in the Bubble, Porter has averaged 22 points and 8.6 rebounds for the Nuggets, giving them a consistent perimeter scoring presence that they’ve lacked for much of the year outside of Jamal Murray. He’s also been lights out from deep, connecting on 42.2 percent of his triples in Orlando.
Porter’s size and offensive versatility make him a nightmare when he’s on his game, something that hasn’t always been the case during his this campaign but has come through in a big way over his last few games. When he his cooking, he’s capable of bullying smaller defenders, busting out his bag of tricks to flummox bigger ones, or pull up over just about anyone. He is a young player putting it all together, and now, he’ll get to show what he can do on this stage.
Denver’s a very good team with a very good player at the center of everything in Nikola Jokic and a fun young guard in Murray, but if they lack anything, it’s the kind of guy who can consistently get a bucket in 1-on-1 situations. Their wager was that Porter could be that guy. He has been in the Bubble, and if he can continue to do that against the Jazz, this series might be over pretty quickly.
Utah Jazz: Someone stepping up and playing point guard
I wrote a good 300-400 words in the early hours of Sunday morning about how Utah needed Mike Conley to look like the player that was so good for so long in Memphis, something that seemed to be the case during the Bubble’s seeding games. Then, news dropped that Conley left the Bubble to be with his family as his wife, Mary, gave birth to baby boy in Ohio.
Not having Conley presents quite the dilemma for the Jazz, although he does plan to return to the team at some point. Utah doesn’t really have a second point guard — Donovan Mitchell has the ball in his hands a ton, but playmaking for others isn’t his strong suit. Joe Ingles can initiate the offense, and he does have quite the feel for the game, but he’s best as a secondary playmaker and a lethal catch-and-shoot player. Jordan Clarkson, meanwhile, is a pure scorer.
Emmanuel Mudiay, who was inactive for two of the Jazz’s final three seeding games due to knee soreness, may need to step up in this capacity. Lineups with Mudiay and Mitchell in the backcourt have not been particularly kind to Utah, per Cleaning the Glass, which presents some conundrums for Quin Snyder to sort out. The good news, insofar as there is any when a starter is out, is that Utah played some of its best basketball earlier this year when Conley was out with a hamstring injury, winning 15 of the 19 games they played with him on the sideline, including 10 in a row. The bad news to that is that an integral part of that stretch, Bojan Bogdanovic, is out for the entirety of the Bubble due to wrist surgery.
Mitchell’s going to have the ball in his hands a lot, particularly in big moments, but it’ll be incumbent on the Jazz to figure out who is running the offense in those minutes when they just need a steady hand at the 1. If they can do that, there’s a path to them taking down the Nuggets.