The first game of the 2020 NBA playoffs is at the halfway point with the Denver Nuggets in control of the Utah Jazz, 59-52. Denver has asserted its dominance over the Utah in the first half, using a variety of dribble hand-offs to pull Rudy Gobert out of the paint and open up a lane to the rim for Jamal Murray to go to work. After a quiet first quarter, Murray scored 12 straight points for the Nuggets, drilling 3s and driving to the rim for difficult layups. The dynamic guard has 14 first-half points, to go along with Nikola Jokic’s 13 points, six rebounds and and two assists.
Utah began to get things going toward the end of the first half, with Donovan Mitchell scoring 17 of his 19 first-half points in the second quarter. However, this team is certainly feeling the effect of not having Mike Conley in this game, as he left the bubble for the birth of his son, Ed Davis, who suffered a knee injury during the seeding games and not having one of its top scorers in Bojan Bogdanovic, who has missed the entirety of the restart due to wrist surgery he underwent back in March. The Jazz found some success pulling Jokic into switches and forcing him to defend. We’ll see if they go to that more in the second half.
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