Nikola Jokic’s third-quarter heat check leads Nuggets to first home win of season over Utah Jazz

Play­ing his sec­ond back-to-back this week and already aver­ag­ing 39.2 min­utes five games into the sea­son, Niko­la Jokic seemed deter­mined to final­ly earn him­self a fourth quar­ter on the bench.

Jokic scored 18 of his 27 points in the third quar­ter as the Nuggets turned a sin­gle-dig­it half­time lead into a 129–103 rout of the Utah Jazz on Sat­ur­day night, tip­ping off a five-game home stand at Ball Are­na. It was their first reg­u­la­tion win of the 2024–25 sea­son and their first time lead­ing after the first quarter.

Jokic made 10 of 18 shots from the field to aid his 16 rebounds and nine assists, play­ing just shy of 30 min­utes. Michael Porter Jr. com­plet­ed an effi­cient back-to-back of his own with 20 points on 4‑for‑6 out­side shoot­ing. And Chris­t­ian Braun con­tin­ued to demon­strate his seam­less two-way fit in the start­ing line­up with 17 points, three assists and two steals.

Twen­ty-four hours after being outscored by 21 points from the 3‑point line in a dra­mat­ic loss at Min­neso­ta, the Nuggets (3–3) bounced back with their best dis­play of perime­ter offense yet. They knocked down 16 of 32 attempts from 3, includ­ing three from Julian Strawther in a 17-point out­ing off the bench.

Garbage time is not irrel­e­vant when a team’s sec­ond unit hasn’t been able to buy a bas­ket all sea­son. After Jokic pro­vid­ed the 24-point cush­ion, the fourth quar­ter Sat­ur­day was a valu­able col­lec­tion of min­utes for the con­fi­dence of Denver’s strug­gling bench play­ers. In fact, it was their first oppor­tu­ni­ty to even play garbage time with a lead. Pey­ton Wat­son saw the ball go in a few times as a rim-run­ner. Michael Malone’s young cast was able to work on chem­istry with Rus­sell West­brook. Hunter Tyson scored a career-high sev­en points after debut­ing as the 10th man in Michael Malone’s rota­tion Fri­day. Jokic nev­er need­ed to remove his over-shirt.

The Nuggets led by as many as 17 in the first half after the bench briefly sup­plied a pleas­ant­ly sur­pris­ing jolt. DeAn­dre Jor­dan made his first appear­ance of the sea­son as Jokic’s back­up cen­ter, in place of the strug­gling Dario Sar­ic. His entrance was imme­di­ate­ly fol­lowed by an 8–0 run fea­tur­ing a Tyson 3‑point play and a pair of buck­ets for Strawther.

But the Jazz answered with six con­sec­u­tive points, a run that quick­ly inflat­ed in the sec­ond quar­ter. Utah came all the way back to tie it moments after Jokic checked back in. But the result nev­er felt seri­ous­ly in doubt, even then. With­in min­utes, Jokic and the starters had reopened a 14-point lead.

West­brook made his first Nuggets start with Jamal Mur­ray in con­cus­sion pro­to­col. Scor­ing con­tin­ued to be a labor for the 35-year-old point guard — he shot 2 for 11 — but his min­utes rov­ing between units man­aged to be a pos­i­tive any­way, thanks to sev­en assists and five steals. In one impres­sive sequence, he broke up a lob dur­ing a 3‑on‑1 fast break, then drew a foul in mid-air while reel­ing in an offen­sive rebound at the oth­er end.



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