The emo­tion­al toll of the past few days did noth­ing to divert Jamal Murray’s leg­endary focus.

The ris­ing super­star stared down the Utah Jazz, ripped off his sec­ond 50-point per­for­mance of the play­off series and guar­an­teed there would be a decid­ing Game 7. Murray’s enthralling per­for­mance paced the Nuggets’ 119–107 win in Game 6 on Sun­day evening.

The vic­to­ry means the Nuggets have forced a Game 7 for just the third time in fran­chise his­to­ry after trail­ing 3–1. They lost both of those series.

Niko­la Jokic added 22 points and nine assists, but it was Murray’s uncon­scious shot­mak­ing that gave the Nuggets con­fi­dence. Mur­ray hit nine 3‑pointers as part of Denver’s assault from beyond the arc.

Murray’s 50 points gave him 204 for the six games, break­ing Jokic’s pre­vi­ous fran­chise record for most points scored in a play­off series. Jokic scored 190 in sev­en games against Port­land last season.

Jazz super­star Dono­van Mitchell fin­ished with 44 points and nine 3‑pointers of his own. Game 7 is Tues­day night.

For weeks, Nuggets’ guard Gary Har­ris had been rehab­bing his strained hip that he’d suf­fered just days after his Orlan­do arrival. Though they des­per­ate­ly need­ed perime­ter defend­ers, the Nuggets delayed his return to ensure he’d be con­fi­dent when he made his bub­ble debut.

On Sun­day, he did. Har­ris hadn’t played in near­ly six months but he gave the Nuggets a sig­nif­i­cant defen­sive boost after they’d been torched by Utah reserve Jor­dan Clark­son the pre­vi­ous five games. It’s pos­si­ble the NBA’s three-day pause con­tributed to Denver’s good fortune.

“We know what Gary’s capa­ble of,” said Nuggets coach Michael Mal­one. “I’m a tremen­dous believ­er in who Gary Har­ris is on both sides of the court.”

Har­ris helped con­tain the Jazz to just 23 points in the third quar­ter, while Jera­mi Grant and Jokic took care of the scor­ing. Grant added 10 points and Jokic drained a clutch, banked 3‑pointer to help pre­serve the lead. At 88–79, the Nuggets had their first lead head­ing into the fourth quar­ter all series. Murray’s shoot­ing in the fourth quar­ter kept Utah at bay.

Sunday’s game, orig­i­nal­ly slat­ed for last Thurs­day, came after days of tur­moil and heartache. After video spread of the Jacob Blake shoot­ing in Wis­con­sin, play­ers from around the NBA decid­ed some­thing need­ed to give. They no longer felt com­fort­able play­ing in a bub­ble, seclud­ed from their fam­i­lies and the out­side world.

The NBA took a momen­tary pause to reflect. When play­ers returned after three emo­tion­al­ly exhaust­ing days, they’d cre­at­ed a new social jus­tice coali­tion, renewed efforts to cre­ate vot­ing access and gained a com­mit­ment from league own­ers to help end qual­i­fied immunity.

But after what Mal­one deemed the worst prac­tice in his five years as coach Fri­day, they re-focused ahead of Sunday’s elim­i­na­tion scenario.

“I got that sense yes­ter­day,” Mal­one said before the game. “Some­what of a return to nor­mal­cy after Wednes­day, Thurs­day, Fri­day was so drain­ing off the court. Prob­a­bly nice to get back to doing what we do so well.

“… You can’t repli­cate the emo­tions of, you’re in the mid­dle of a play­off series, you’re com­ing off of a real­ly good, excit­ing Game 5 win, and then all the sud­den some­body pulls the plug out, and you’re wait­ing to play, you’re wait­ing to see what’s going on.”

Mur­ray didn’t wait for the sec­ond half to catch fire like he did when help­ing the Nuggets stave off elim­i­na­tion in Game 5. Instead, Mur­ray sliced Utah’s defense with 25 points in the first half and spear­head­ed a 61–56 half­time lead.

His whiplash dri­ves and auda­cious shoot­ing imbued the type of con­fi­dence that had been absent in the first half of their series.

The Nuggets, who were once down 10 in the first quar­ter, held the Jazz to just 20 sec­ond-quar­ter points high­light­ing the defen­sive impact Har­ris can have. It was their defense, after all, that saved their sea­son when they were star­ing up at a 3–1 deficit.