For two days the Jazz had to live with Jamal Mur­ray night­mares, the type that leave you trail­ing a series despite a his­toric 57-point explo­sion by one of your own.

And Jazz coach Quin Sny­der was deter­mined to get a good night’s sleep.

Utah opened Wednesday’s Game 2 with rugged wing Royce O’Neale check­ing Mur­ray instead of vet­er­an Joe Ingles. There was no eras­ing the mem­o­ry of Mur­ray torch­ing Ingles through­out Monday’s fourth quar­ter and over­time ses­sions despite the size advan­tage he seem­ing­ly had over him.

One loss and 36 points lat­er, it was O’Neale’s job to bot­tle up Denver’s pre­co­cious point guard. In large part, the tweak worked. Mur­ray fin­ished with an unre­mark­able 14 points and four assists in 30 min­utes in the Game 2 pounding.

That defen­sive assign­ment had noth­ing to do with the col­lapse of Denver’s 3‑point defense, but it cer­tain­ly imped­ed its abil­i­ty to claw back.

“If you want to cred­it them scor­ing 124 points and lim­it­ing us to 105 (to that matchup) you can, but I don’t buy that,” Nuggets coach Michael Mal­one said sharply.

Mur­ray had just four points at half­time, when the game was still close, and was almost a non-fac­tor along­side Denver’s two oth­er pil­lars, Niko­la Jokic and Michael Porter Jr. Mean­while, Jazz star Dono­van Mitchell authored anoth­er exem­plary, eff­i­cent per­for­mance with 30 points.

“Their best play­ers played well,” Mal­one said. “We need our best play­ers to play well. That’s the bot­tom line, it’s the playoffs.”

Mur­ray knows it, too. His steady, self-assured postgame answers sold the idea that he wasn’t flus­tered by the tactic.

“(O’Neale) was just press­ing,” Mur­ray said. “We just got­ta be more aggres­sive, we just got­ta hold our spots more. (He) messed up the plays a cou­ple times, makes it look worse.”

In the moments after Wednesday’s drub­bing, Mur­ray was already reassess­ing how his approach would dif­fer in Game 3.

“Whether I’m going down­hill or whether I’m tak­ing my shot, just com­mit to it,” Mur­ray said. “Some­times I get indecisive.”

Maybe O’Neale’s phys­i­cal­i­ty was more impact­ful than any­one knew going in, but the Nuggets thrive when Mur­ray plays with con­vic­tion. He did in the third quar­ter, when he put his head down and bul­lied O’Neale for a team-high 10 points, though it bare­ly reg­is­tered in com­par­i­son to Utah’s 43-point flood.

If the Jazz stick with O’Neale on Mur­ray, Wednesday’s third quar­ter should serve as a rough outline.

“They made some adjust­ments and now it’s our turn to go make ours,” Mur­ray said.