Michael Porter Jr. isn’t try­ing to focus on any positives.

Not after the 124–105 drub­bing the Den­ver Nuggets took Wednes­day from the Utah Jazz in Game 2 of their first-round play­off series — a loss that evened the series 1–1.

“Twen­ty-eight points doesn’t real­ly mean any­thing when you get beat,” he said.

The rookie’s play on offense was one of the few bright spots in an oth­er­wise dark affair for Denver.

In just under 33 min­utes, Porter dropped 28 points to match Niko­la Jokic for the team lead in scor­ing. The 6‑foot-10 for­ward also grabbed six rebounds, with his 58.8% shoot­ing (10-of-17) tops among Nuggets who played more than six minutes.

His strong show­ing came after a spot­ty Game 1 per­for­mance, but for Porter the only num­bers that mat­ter are the ones on the scoreboard.

“I don’t think I played the best game I could play,” he said. “There are a lot of areas I’ve got to improve on, some adjust­ments I’ve got to make, as well as the rest of the team.”

With Will Bar­ton out indef­i­nite­ly, and defen­sive-mind­ed Tor­rey Craig tasked with guard­ing Utah’s Dono­van Mitchell, Porter has been forced to shoul­der more of the scor­ing load for the Nuggets. That point guard Jamal Mur­ray attempt­ed just two 3‑pointers only com­pound­ed the need for the rook­ie to step up on the offen­sive end.

And step up he did: Porter made 6‑of‑9 from beyond the 3‑point arc, even as Utah defend­ers closed out on him once he estab­lished he had it going from deep. Sev­er­al makes came with hands in his face.

“I have a pret­ty high release, so I don’t real­ly know what it looks like on TV, but it doesn’t feel like they have a hand in my face,” he said. “They feel like open shots.”

Despite his offen­sive out­put, Porter was crit­i­cal of his own lack of aggres­sive­ness search­ing for his shot, espe­cial­ly as he spends more time with the start­ing group and learns to mesh his game with Jokic and Murray.

Defense, how­ev­er, was the top­ic he was the harsh­est on him­self. The Nuggets, he said, strug­gled with help defense but he added poor one-on-one defense was the root of most of their prob­lems. Utah’s guards cre­at­ed shots at will or blew by defend­ers to get into the lane. Porter said he must focus hard­er on that end.

“I just need to lock in every pos­ses­sion, have a fly-around men­tal­i­ty, and try to be just as good on the defen­sive end as on the offen­sive end,” he said.