Three Takeaways From Donovan Mitchell And Utah’s Dominant Win Over Denver

After a heartbreaking overtime loss to the Nuggets in Game 1 in which Donovan Mitchell had 57 points — the third highest scoring playoff performance in NBA history — the Utah Jazz bounced back to dominate Denver in Game 2 in a 122-96 win.

It was an impressive effort given that it could’ve been easily demoralizing to drop a game in which your star player has a career night, but instead, the rest of the team stepped up around Mitchell and provided him with the support needed to rout the Nuggets in Game 2. With the series now all knotted up at 1-1, we’re going to look at a few key takeaways from Game 2 and what both teams will look to do going forward in this series.

Donovan Mitchell Has Taken Another Step

Mitchell was superb again with 30 points and eight assists on a preposterous 10-for-14 shooting, including hitting six of his seven attempts from beyond the arc. Even factoring in Denver’s defensive woes, his 87 points two games into this series demands some reevaluation of his status in the hierarchy of the league’s stars. Mitchell has long been asked to do a lot for the Utah offense, but in the first two games of this series he’s looked more in control of his game and this Jazz offense than ever before. He’s become a masterful pick-and-roll ball-handler, where he’s not just hunting for his own shots but has seemingly taken a step forward as a passer, as he made a couple of absurd dishes to teammates in the corner on Wednesday.

That attribute is particularly important right now with Mike Conley Jr. out, although he seems on track to return by Game 3, but even with Conley in the lineup, Mitchell setting the table for his teammates is so critical to the Utah offense succeeding. We know he can get buckets — and on Wednesday he was lights out off the dribble pulling up over late contests from bigs hedging on the pick-and-roll — but that added dynamic as both an efficient scorer and facilitator gives this Jazz offense some serious life.

Denver Remains Lost On Defense

Denver got absolutely blitzed in this one, and a chunk of that was simply lights out shooting from Utah’s others. The Jazz were 20-for-44 from three on the day, with Royce O’Neale, Joe Ingles, and Jordan Clarkson all lacing it up for a combined 11 threes. That’s likely not sustainable, but Denver’s defense simply looks lost in the sauce right now. They’ve tried both drop coverage and hard hedging on Mitchell in pick-and-roll to almost no success over the first two games, continuing a worrying trend from the seeding round where they were posted a league worst defensive rating.

Being without Gary Harris and Will Barton, the latter of whom has left the Bubble, has created serious problems on the defensive end and they can’t seem to figure out what scheme is best for the personnel they have, maybe in part because they simply don’t have the personnel right now to execute much of anything on that end. Utah is, typically, not an offensive marvel without Bogdanovic in the lineup, but through two games they’ve excelled.

The worst part of this for Denver is it’s hard to see what the answers are with the roster they have available. Torrey Craig is about the only reliable on-ball defender they have on the perimeter, and their hedging approach kept Mitchell out of the paint and off the free throw line. Maybe you just have to live with him hoisting off the dribble threes and hope those stop falling, and continue trying to pressure him into passing the ball and hoping that three-point shooting the Jazz posted in Game 2 goes away. Otherwise, you risk opening up the paint for Mitchell to attack downhill on drop coverage, where he cooked Denver in Game 1. We’ll see what Mike Malone cooks up for Game 3, but it has to be exhausting trying to come up with a defensive game plan this group can execute without Harris and Barton.

It’s Jordan Clarkson Time

With Conley returning, Clarkson won’t have as big a role to play for the Jazz, but he’s still going to be asked to carry a significant load as a ball-handler and scorer for the second unit going forward. On Wednesday, Clarkson had a career night with 26 points, four rebounds, and three assists off the bench, hitting on nine of his 18 attempts from the field and four of his nine threes. Clarkson has never been a marvel of efficiency, but he’s a bucket-getter and provides a much needed dynamic off the bench for Utah. With Denver down two of their three best wing defenders, there’s ample opportunity for Clarkson to eat and he’s never one to pass up a chance to fire away.

What Utah can’t have is Clarkson go cold and continue firing at the expense of looks for the likes of Mitchell and a returning Conley. When Jordan Clarkson Time is good, it’s a whole lot of fun, but when it goes bad, he isn’t one to suddenly stop shooting and he can send the offense into a spiral by forcing it.