Utah Jazz: 3 key takeaways from win against Denver Nuggets

The Utah Jazz defeated the Denver Nuggets 122-110 on Wednesday evening. It was their most significant victory of the young NBA season to date when factoring in strength of competition, with seven Jazzmen scoring in double digits en route to a relatively easy win.From a league-wide perspective, the most significant takeaway from this game was probably Nikola Jokic’s knee-to-knee collision with Rudy Gobert with 1:54 remaining in the second quarter. The reigning MVP lay on the ground clutching his knee for a worrisome amount of time. Here’s hoping for a speedy recovery for one of the NBA’s most fun and talented players.

There was also a fourth-quarter shoving match between Hassan Whiteside and JaMychal Green that merits mention, but offers little in terms of grounds for analysis. Both men were ejected following the dust-up.

Otherwise, there were several Jazz-specific takeaways to glean from this contest. Here are three that we felt were most important.

Utah Jazz vs Denver Nuggets Takeaway #1: Bojan Bogdanovic’s defense

It may seem counterintuitive to focus on negative aspects of a 12-point victory over a fellow NBA title contender, but the Utah Jazz continue to demonstrate areas in which they could stand to improve.

During the offseason, we set a goal for Bojan Bogdanovic to post a career-best Defensive Rating. Early into 2021-22 , he doesn’t exactly look on track to meet it.

Aaron Gordon scored 20 points on a hyper-efficient 9/13 from the field last night, and Bogey deserves almost as much blame as Gordon does credit for his performance. Gordon bullied Bogdanovic down low on a consistent basis, plowing through the veteran Croatian wing to get to the basket for consistently easy looks.

Often times, it appeared that Gordon made such short work of Bogdanovic that even 3x Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert wasn’t able to rotate over to help quickly enough. Granted, Gordon has physical and athletic advantages over Bogdanovic that every forward in the league will not, but conversely, the athletic Nuggets forward is a career 12.7 point per game scorer.

This was not a player who should have been lighting the Jazz up. One could argue that the onus was on Head Coach Quin Snyder to make an adjustment. Perhaps he could have assigned Royce O’Neale to Gordon. On the other hand, O’Neale had a great deal to do with Michael Porter Jr.’s inefficient 5/18 performance.

O’Neale can guard the other team’s best wing/forward, but he can’t guard their two best. Bogdanovic is going to have to find a way to compensate for his athletic limitations with improved positioning and timing, or else the Utah Jazz stand to get consistently burned by average offensive players like Aaron Gordon.